Saturday, December 09, 2017

Dirges For Divinity...

Djinn and Miskatonic - Even Gods Must Die (2017)



Hailing from India (and the excellent Transcending Obscurity record label), Djinn and Miskatonic made their debut with the album Forever in the Realm back in the year of 2013. Now they're back, with another six songs of doom and dread, rumbling bass and slow-moving riffs, and they're well in their element.
Kicking off with “I, Zombie” (no, not a cover of the White Zombie track), the band plugs into a heavy current, waves of chords drifting back and forth, as they dig into the opener for the better side of fifteen minutes. Having made their demonstration of how well they handle size, the band trims things back for a few following songs, before returning to the ten-plus size for the last two. And through that total hour of dirging, the band tests out some flavor experiments while keeping the modern doom base firm. There's drizzles of black and death, stretches of clean vocals (usually quickly countered with guttural rasping), but the main drives are built on the backs of workhorse riffs, just rolling on and on with some small twists worked into their cycles.
The biggest fault with the music, from my perspective, would be how straight-forward it is. Both the album and band name suggest some mystical elements, but what you get is pretty standard, if jumbo-sized, modern doom metal from start to finish. There's no real toying with unusual sounds (a spot of keyboards here and there would have done wonders in that regard), and the steadiness of the weight makes things feel more sloggish than crushing by the end of it all. It's good stuff, just don't go into it expecting the psychedelic elements suggested by the cover art.
~ Gabriel


For Fans Of; Brume, Electric Wizard, Major Kong, REZN, SwampCult




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