10 Inch Vinyl Review: "Dope Rider" by Kurokuma

Dope Rider

Today's vinyl review is from a band all the way from Sheffield, England.

I hear tale, they're about to say HELLO AMERICA! If we're lucky, they won't be bringing on the HEARTBREAK and the Colonies will be able to give them some approval, or we become PYROMANIACS.

If the clues weren't enough, naturally I'm talking about Sheffield's finest stoner metal band, Kurokuma.

When going through  my emails to pull all of the info I could on this band, I noticed that Dope Rider wasn't the first chance I had to feature these gents. Just last night I was telling my daughter that opportunity only knocks once. Should I inform her that this old axiom isn't always true?

Well, as Kurokuma already shattered the space time continuum and well worn social knowledge, let's break tradition here at Glacially Musical-land and talk about the lyrics.

Kurokuma

Dope Rider is a concept EP. I'll get back to that later if I remember later that I wrote that I'd get back to it later....for some reason, after properly enjoying this EP, I'm not certain my memory will hold.

In order to go the most stoner metal a stoner metal band could be, Sheffield's dopiest looked back to a 1975 comic strip from an issue of High Times. This either the best example of stoner meta or the worst kind of pandering.

Personally, I'm not high enough to really speak to either, so we'll go with super meta, because it's find saying meta. The band has included a copy of the comic strip on the insert card as well, so we can read the lyrics along to the tracks and watch the adventure depicted.

Having the lyrics on the card is quite helpful, because, they're not precisely intelligible without a little bit of help.

When dealing with stoner or doom metal, what do you want? The differences between the acts under that moniker can be rather stark really.

Kurokuma gives us half modern and half vintage. It's two sides fighting all at once. That's exceptionally interesting as there are only three  members of the band. So which is the half and the other half too.

There's a groove deep enough to scrape the bottom of the sea and a drive that'll move a Chevy Silverado. (Note: I saw one of those today and they're ginormous.)

Dope Rider makes me a bit angry with myself for not answering their knock sooner, but having this delicious slab on my shelf, well, that might be good enough.

RELEASE 10/26/18 BANDCAMP FACEBOOK