Throughout years of battling against stoner bands who make quick successes of themselves, Orange Goblin have long proved that hard graft gets you far, and they’ve done it not by disembowelling the 70s for every musical influence this side of Leaf Hound, but by anchoring Mary Jane and fuzzed-up Marshall amps with a present day sense of beer-soaked euphoria.
However, Back From The Abyss follows on rampantly, if not awkwardly, from 2012’s accomplished A Eulogy For The Damned, pitching the same strident grooves against a noticeably more diverse repertoire of songs that range from their homage to Motörhead on The Devil’s Whip to the unlikely battle anthem Heavy Lies The Crown with cries of ‘To Valhalla!’ Into The Arms Of Morpheus is a huge slab of Sabbathian bluesiness that shoots to the core of Orange Goblin, while Mythical Knives exploits the neo-classical ponderings of Metallica’s Sanitarium and opener Sabbath Hex rumbles with Southern drawl. As their eighth album comes to an end, they cut their signature meat’n’potatoes riffs with a dose of dragging doom. And with that, Back From The Abyss’s gutsy expression of experimentalism doesn’t so much point us in a new direction as it stands us at the crossroads, boldly ushering in a bolder incarnation of these London lads on the cusp of their 20th anniversary.
Via Candlelight
