Labels: Abstract Sounds
Review by: Kunal Nandi
This album is quite patently ridiculous. Although there are only three tracks on this album, they clock in at 18, 7 and 24 minutes respectively. Further to this, the singer sounds like Ozzy Osbourne. For fuck’s sake!
If you haven’t already grabbed your coat in your rush to get to the nearest record store, feel free to read more about this completely genius record. Of course, it’s hard to get past the fact that these songs are so bloody long, but when you listen to it, it’s so shockingly easy for that fact to slip to the very back of your mind that you’ll think that you’ve entered some sort of drug-enhanced hypnotic trance, which to some extent you have.
This is definitely stoner-rock, but I’m going to hold off on the prog references, because it doesn’t seem that proggy to me. You may be yelling “But look at the length of those fucking songs you fucking idiot!” at me, but Yob have such an unbelievable knack for getting a handful of ginormous riffs and pounding the shit out of them repeatedly that is neither boring in the slightest or overtly ‘experimental’. These songs NEED to be this long! It’s not like they just play really slowly either; the seven-minute track is actually pretty fast, with monolithic riffing that reminds me of High On Fire. You’d swear it was over in 180 seconds. Everything progresses in such a beautifully organic manner, with much of it being pretty melodious and epic plus it’s so damn rocking and catchy. Yes!