Description
Chains have been going for quite a few years now, gaining a lot of plaudits from the doom community for their brand of psych-y drone doom. I got their amazing 12″, “Violet Wizard” a few years ago in distro and was totally blown away by the Hawkwind-via-Liz-era Electric Wizard going on there. This album is a kind of culmination of their evolution from droning doom to sing-a-long doom metal! That doesn’t sound like it should work, but it absolutely fuckin does!
Sandwiched between opening and ending tracks of ambient dread (full marks for paying tribute to Twin Peaks by calling the final track “Garmonbozia” and for it having some Lynchian jazz drums and creepy discordant sound effects), this record is five absolute doom metal bangers. The production is insanely beefy and punchy, it sounds utterly fuckin great.
I’ve not heard a band since the ace Lamp Of Thoth who could create such listenable, anthemic doom tunes. I think every one of the tunes on here has a “whoa oh oh” or something like that in there; significantly album centrepiece “Dancing With My Demons” which came out in another version on Svart Records as a 7″ a couple of years ago. It’s a total instant classic, would love to see them banging it out to a sing-a-long crowd!
It’s very deliberate that I’ve chosen to release this at the same time as the Tony Tears archival recordings. They’re on the surface miles apart but pretty much aesthetically coming from the same place. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that Chains listen to tons of dark sound.
