Their name might sound like laugh-out-loud stoner doom self-parody, but there’s no doubt this debut long-player from these Welsh doom newcomers sounds exactly as you’d expect a band with this name to sound: agonisingly fuzzed-out and bass-heavy, with few vocals to speak of and flailing skeleton drums buried deep under gas-cloud chug riffs.
There are fine lines to tread with this kind of tone-driven sludge, between spontaneity and aimlessness, hypnosis and monotony, and MWWB stagger and lurch between them like their titular entity. There’s much here that’s run-of-the-mill and over-familiar: the primeval chords of Conan rendered too sprightly, with some attempt at the Bong/13 Paranoias school of psychedelic disorientation, but MWWB’s burbles, squeaks and offbeat backing vocals sometimes seem a little tentative and arbitrary. However, the last eight minutes of closing half-hour jam caravan Nacht Hexen Master – ritualistic rhythms over a broken ethereal choir, followed by the album’s most resolute, hammering riff – has a real eccentric, triumphant heathen magic, which hopefully points the way to the future.
