Gollum- Lesser Traveled Waters
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I don’t think they particularly wanna commit to either, but Gollum might the world’s first stoner rock-black metal band. And while that was, by no stretch of the imagination, BOUND to happen, it’s a pretty logical evolution, really. I mean, what goes better with Satan than drugs, right? As such, the constantly churning soundscapes of “Lesser Traveled Waters” is like some kinda heavy rock buffet, as trance-y acid-doom passages give way to vicious Slayer riffs and a demonic rasp, which eventually collapse into King Diamond-esque unearthly choirs, and back again. It’s
quite mad, no doubt about it, and more ambitious then any bedeviled dope fiends from Wilmington, NC really oughta be, but with all this fuzzy pretzel logic going on, it pretty much never gets boring. Largely instrumental (the song titles are so long – “The Dissolution of Faith, part ii: Despondent Search for Truth”, etc.- that I guess they couldn’t fit too many more words into the actual songs), with a few episodes of devil-barking and a smattering of vocal samples to liven things up, Gollum is total mind-movie music, perfect for dustheads and schizophrenics. I dunno how well all the brainiac stuff is gonna wash with yr average beer swilling metalhead, but certainly the stoner-prog dudes and the black metal cellar dwellars’ll eat it up. And hell, what with the creepy oil paintings and pseudo-satanic gibberish, it might even throw a few parents into a tizzy. So, there ya go. It sure ain’t rock n’ roll, but it’s heavy and almost evil, and I bet yr at least one of those too, right?
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