Evoke Thy Lords - Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms In Your Cellar! (CD)

Review
Metal Storm
8.1/10
23.03.2015

Nearly 25 years ago Jello Biafra (formerly of Dead Kennedys) teamed up with Nomeansno to urge me to "Ride The Flume."

Flash forward to 2015 and now Evoke Thy Lords is back encouraging me to ride the Floom.

Floom?

Basic math. Flute + Stoner Doom = Floom.

And with the awesomely named Boys! Grow Giant Mushrooms In Your Cellar! the Siberian Cosmonauts are doling more of that stoner rock meets doom vibe. All topped off with woodwind work of Irina Drebushchak, who (to call back to a shameless movie reference in my review of Drunken Tales) "has a voice that could make a wolverine purr and plays flute so fine she makes Ron Burgundy sound like a hobo."

The band plays some great stoner jams. The drummer feels like he's just loose, chilling and flowing free behind the kit while the bass and guitar work together to bounce between crunchy jams and doomy power chord mashing. The flute shows up to float along and bounce over the jammy bits to provide some buzzchill, often, though, not appearing to be flowing with the current… sometimes just floating a tad off on their own, like a leaf on the wind.

The biggest drawback is the vocals on the male end. While Irina isn't going to unseat Tarja as femme icon, but her pipes are fitting. The death doom growls aren't that great, though and almost feel out of place. The raspier, near spoken bit worked better. As with the predecessor, the vocals are used somewhat sparsely. That works, as the band's at its best just jamming and grooving away, but they fill what would be an otherwise odd void. They fill a needed role as I think the album might be slightly diminished if just an instrumental affair.

The band toss in a few more curveballs, beyond that flute thing. Betrayer. Lier starts with what sounds like bongos, throat singing and a mouth harp.

So enough with my words. I suggest you check this out. In the meantime, I'm off. I need to research me some subterranean fungiculture.

Author: BitterCOld

Review
Forgotten Path
8/10

I’m not that sure why Evoke thy Lords is described as a Stoner Doom Metal act... For me they sound too beautiful to be on such a page. I imagine that the entire Stoner sound should be based on psychedelic influences more, though I can’t deny this Russian band hasn’t done so (just read the title of the album one more time...). Anyway, the third full-length album of this act was a rather interesting and really nice experience. Everything is based on a slow rhythm and dark atmosphere, pretty sad mood. Believe it or not, but the highlights of the album are female vocals and flute parts, which add so much beauty and harmony to the creations and sound. In general, this isn’t your typical Stoner or even Doom Metal album - this is so much more, no matter if you see it as experimental, or just not an ordinary one. I would say the album is not that heavy, but rather dark, and even if the entire waves are not that cold (as for a Metal album), still the release has a special aura that is definitely not of a sunny origin...
The tracks, which have male growling vocals and more traditional Stoner riffs, are not those which I enjoyed most, but luckily, the entire album is full of those flute sounds and additional female vocals, and that’s harmony already. The band managed to successfully mix traditional features of the genre and something that could be alien here. However, everything fits really well. Some more original and interesting creativity could be welcome, but the band showed its high value with success. A beautiful and solid album, indeed - try it, as it’s not exactly what you could expect from the title of it...

Author: Odium