A brand-new album release from Gentle Beast just dropped, and this thing is expansive, sonically driving, and has a massive blend of stoner and doom rock embedded in its veins, along with edgy, fuzztone distortion and an engulfing approach.
The record is called Vampire Witch Reptilian Super Soldier (...from outer space), and you know what? It's a damn appropriate title.
This album is incredibly adventurous and fantastical, and it just hits hard and all the right ways.
The album wastes no time pulling you into its cinematic, vast, heavy-hitting atmosphere with the first track, "Planet Drifter".
The song starts almost like an old western and opens up into an earth-rumbling doom rock soundscape with gigantic riffs and bellowing, belting vocals.
This is a great song to introduce the record simply because it opens up the storyline. This, to me, seems and feels like a concept record, and the story is intertwined from beginning to end.
It's also a great introduction to the album simply because it gets you prepared for what you're about to dive into.
Some of my favorite stuff comes from songs like "Witch of the Mountain", which bears this awesome octavized riff with widened drums and deepening atmospheres, and you begin to hear elements of classic metal influence in their sound.
Its tracks like "Riding Waves of Karma" that grab me most because songs like this give that cinematic backbone and very expansive underbelly.
The first chunk of the song is this sort of calm before the storm, and it's spacious and ambient with clean guitars and reverb-drenched vocals.
This is all before the song explodes into crashing waves of Sonic massiveness, and it just has such a powerful and impactful feel that it's completely infectious.
The Switzerland-based band certainly took their time putting this record together, as it's got a gigantic concept. This is solidified with the closing track on the record called "The Last Smoke".
This is a perfect closing to the record and the drumming on this track in particular, is really driving and huge.
One of the things that gets me about this album is that it almost feels like a live performance.
It's almost like the record was recorded live on the floor, to an extent. Some other overdubs were done afterward, of course, but the energy feels like everyone in the band is feeding off of each other the entire time.
This is part of why it gives the record such a vivacious and bountiful edginess.
I love listening to a band on record and immediately knowing that they will be incredible in a live performance setting.
Even if I'm wrong about the whole live on the floor thing, listening to the record most certainly makes you want to see these guys perform the entire record right in front of your face.
If they can capture this kind of energy on record, seeing them live would be awesome.
Everything about this record is driving, and there's a lot of thought behind how it was all put together, built, and even mixed.
This album has a very particular doom and stoner rock aesthetic that gives way to a little metal, grunge, desert rock, and more.
You can hear hints of other influences strewn throughout the records' playthrough, and it was a lot to soak in.
This was a killer record, and I suggest you listen to it from beginning to end so you can pull the whole storyline in, but also do it loudly.
Listening to the record loud is imperative because that's the way it was meant to be heard.
Even better is listening to it with headphones on. This lets the deep bass come in thick and rumbling.
The bass guitar is one of the most important aspects of doom or stoner rock because the riffs are so widened and massive that the base gives them their impact.
Check this record out and remember where you heard it first.
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