Sloth
The Voice of God
The Music Cartel
There’s presently a great deal of bamboozlery in the mutually inclusive worlds of doom metal and “stoner rock,” but it appears that the cream of the crop is finally rising to the top, and loudly, at that. Case in point: Sloth’s mammoth The Voice of God debut. A relatively new voice in the (overcrowded) crowd, Sloth aren’t doing anything remotely new, they’re just doing it well • so well, in fact, that when the submerged, low-end riffs of guitarist Roland come rolling and roiling through, all head-nodding and hypnotizing, you can’t help but raise your hands in rapture to the stone(d) caravan in the night sky; and with the average song length at a stymieing nine minutes, this introductory thud is stretched out mightily and engrossingly, its seven songs in 61 minutes being the ample dosage for a hallucinogen this overwhelmingly strong. Lots of Trouble, slightly less SST-era Saint Vitus, with the wattage and crunch of Sleep or perhaps Fudge Tunnel to boot, The Voice of God proudly and presently lands the British quartet somewhere’s between modern Cathedral on one ‘lude more, Electric Wizard minus one. Psychedelic without resorting to hokey (hookah?) posturing or a bevy of “freaky” effects pedals, narcotic without being overtly or self-consciously so, The Voice of God is indeed a scary one.
The Music Cartel, PO Box 629, Port Washington, NY 11050, http://www.music-cartel.com
