Hex - Earth

Earth is a highly influential doom rock band from Washington, and whatever they sounded like prior to their fourth album, 'HEX: Or Printing in the Infernal Method' inaugurates a new era of highly distinctive, near-ambient drone music that's sure to divide doom fans. These monumentally slow compositions evoke a nostalgic, desolate sense of the Old West, borrowing the guitar style from Ennio Morricone's seminal Spaghetti Western soundtracks and taking the already-glacial tempo of doom metal to new extremes. An entirely instrumental and minimalistic album, this comes perilously close to country music on several occasions by incorporating the style effectively, as heard when 'An ...

The Bees Made Honey In The Lions Skull - Earth

Earth continue to play their Western-tinged drone doom rock on this year's release, but the style has subtly changed since the days of 'HEX' to favour a more bluesy and, overall, more optimistic approach. The songs are still extended, minimal, repetitive compositions based around seriously sloooooow guitar melodies, but the atmosphere is less depressing and much more uplifting this time round, with only a couple of exceptions in the form of later songs such as 'Omens and Portents II: Carrion Crow' that return to the old, darker style. The piano comes to the fore in 'Engine of Ruin' to add some variety, but this is still essentially an album geared towards hypnotic repetition of ...