Salem's Pot - ...Lurar ut dig på prärien (2014)

 

I am so hyped and fried at the moment; it’s hard to start this review. Be aware that the amount of fan girling might exceed the Chandrasekhar limit. If you’re someone like me, chances are that Salem’s Pot can easily be among your favourite bands. Well, not really, as they have only released a few songs so far; but you would definitely dig them. Dig them hard.

For a starter, their three songs album sounds like Electric Wizard, only if they cared what was going on. So much slow sleaze, it feels like crawling through dirt in electric colours. The vocalist is buried under five tones of smoke and blurts out lyrics like Clayton from Satan’s Satyrs. If you have listened to both bands' latest records a lot, you'd probably find a lot of resemblance in the vocal "style". The production sounds super garage, may I say, basement; and altogether the feeling is one of being in an 80s giallo horror movie.

After having listened to this album for ten times, I find myself whining it’s not any longer - and the mere fact that I was in utter joy after finding they have two other demos, can only give a hint about them being something more than your average three man down-tuned shit ass doom fuck. As a whole, the music sounds driven by drugs and psychedelia, no idea how true that is, but what matters is that it sounds rightfully in its own space and dimension. There is no ray of positivism, no female infused vocals and no retro chicks, sorry. Actually I have no idea if there are any female members, but thankfully you can’t hear any tiny voices.

 

The pace of the whole thing is real slow (wah, surprise!) and feels more like you are being dragged rather than led to somewhere. The coolest down-tuned guitar solos enter here and there, always being distorted and sludgy.

Many bands in the stoner/doom genre use vertigo for their artistic presentation (booklets, albums covers, etc.) but I can only guess most of them do it because it's considered to be retro and probably because of Black Sabbath. However, these folks here do sound mind fucked to an incomprehensible level and I think they are finally someone whose music is cool enough to use it. The fact they've decided to use Soledad Miranda is another thing I like them. People with good taste should support people with good taste.

Now go listen to them, kids, load another one. Get hype.

http://salemspot.bandcamp.com/