Veteran bongrippers may recall with a shudder the dark days of the late 90s when stoner rock became a clumsy parody of itself and records that actually made you want to get high and bang your head were few and far between.
If Major Kong had been around back then, they could have rescued the entire genre because Doom Machine gets everything right.
From the brutally overdriven crackle’n’fuzz of the guitars through to the brilliance of the riffs themselves, these instrumental squalls strike an exquisite balance between doom intensity and stoner sprightliness, that all-important debt to Kyuss looming large but nowhere near large enough to diminish this band’s hulking power. The finest moments come late on, as Planets And Sun Consumed expands and slithers through its 10 malevolent minutes while presenting a threat to the integrity of your speakers. Closer Skull Of The Titan is more of the same, but with one of those pendulous, Bonham-esque grooves that practically rolls the spliff for you.
