LP Review: "Future Echo Returns" by Slomatics

Future Echo Returns

Picture this if you well.

On Monday evening, inside a casino bar, two friends are drinking beers, talking, and not gambling.

They had just eaten Ramen Burgers.

One of them looks up and says, "Dude, I'm totally on a doom metal kick these days."

The other, slightly older and decidedly not metal, just shakes his head and then talks about how they need to be making a podcast of just talking.

This is a true story. My friend and I ate ramen burgers, drank beer, and just talked because it had been awhile, and let me tell you, boy, Tiger Beer is still awesome. It's always Tiger Time for me!

Slotmatics

Due to 2016 being, as we're calling it as of right now, the year of the best doom metal ever, it's not hard to be on the lookout for more of it.

There's seemingly a resurgence.

Lately, I'm growing bored with technical death metal, brutal death metal, et al, because the genre is repeating itself a bit too much.

This is where Doom Metal succeeds over over metal subgenres. Sabbath laid the blueprint between 1970 and 1978. Those records had synths, crunched guitars, acoustic guitars, pianos, and far more than we probably know.

Slomatics seems to really love the middle Sabbath Period. Who are you, Slotmatic? Who are you?

Seems a bit strange that a doom metal record could be so amazing without several wah wah riffs and lingering psychedelia, but Slomatics has done that.

The songs are thumping, pounding, and sparse. The terrain they cover is like the fog rolling in over the moors. Maybe there is a werewolf coming, but maybe there's not.  This album sounds like the first werewolf attack in An American Werewolf In London.

We are drunk (spaced out fuzz) and we don't know where we're going (synths and shouted vocals), and then it happens. The attack (thundering riffs and drums).

Release: 9/2/16
Genre: Doom Metal
Label: Black Bow Records
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