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DEATHBELL - With the Beyond
Kozmik Artifactz
DEATHBELL is a four piece doom act hailing from France who started out in 2016. Musically you have, on this their debut full length, a band that employs your standard Sabbath-ian riffage, bass lead ins, a slow somewhat psychedelic atmosphere to their songs. And then there's singer / keyboardist Lauren Gaynor adding that airy, haunting vocal style.
Sound familiar? It should. The formula is nothing new but it's popular enough to have been repeated time and time again. There's nothing wrong with that of course. I've written about a half dozen bands this year who push the whole female fronted stoner doom / psych style. The key with all of the bands including this one is whether or not the music is exciting or just rehash of someone else's hard creative work.
So over multiple listens my answer is yes to both explanations. DEATHBELL are the French version of WINDHAND. Now I have no problem with that but I'm sure Dorthia Cottrell and company are smiling somewhere. Still the vocals by Lauren Gaynor are less drone, more clean sounding. The guitar work is more psych with wah wah pedal leads running throughout. Plus the keys add more psych damage and melody. All in all it's worth your time if you like this style of doom.
http://kozmik-artifactz.com/
https://deathbelldoom.bandcamp.com/releases
https://www.facebook.com/DeathbellDoom/
ALASTOR - Black Magic
Twin Earth Records
On this band's Bandcamp page there's a comment saying "for fans of ELECTRIC WIZARD and WINDHAND." So I was thinking well that's not very nice. Seriously are we talking about the cool early era of ELECTRIC WIZARD or the latter repetitive boring era of ELECTRIC WIZARD because there is a difference. As far as the WINDHAND reference well They put out a great debut unfortunately they keep repeating it over and over and over and over again.
OK I'm done with that point but here we have this four piece act from Sweden who don't want to reveal themselves to the public. Hmmm, should've thought about that before you put your band photo on Facebook. But anyways this debut EP of there's does till the same row as the above mentioned bands. It's stoner riff-centric almost to the point of being a "jam band". There's three cuts on here, two of which are over the ten minute mark and the short format release works for them because they are cool songs.
There's a lot of cool things going on within these three cuts that a typical bong head (yeah you had to buy it as a "water pipe", LOL!) will overlook because they're stoned out of their gourd. First off the lead guitar work is fantastic. All hail the Voxx wah wah pedal. Secondly the vocals being held back in the mix to give em an airy mystical feel. This is Occult Psych Stoner Rock by the way. Finally the catchiest tune on here, "Nothing to Fear".
http://www.twinearthrecords.com/
https://www.facebook.com/alastordoom/
https://alastordoom.bandcamp.com/releases
