doom / stoner
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Now here's a question I've been punishing my brain with in the past few years. We're living in a world where good and evil seem to be reversed. With so many terror in the name of all that is good and divine, you can indeed wonder if Satan, or whatever you want to call him, is actually the good guy and the others, who are being worshipped in many forms, aren't in fact the harvesters of pain and suffering. However, let's not go into and endless, and completely useless, discussion about religion here. Let's talk about music, heavy, groovy music.
Sideburn hails from Sweden and plays a stoner induced version of good old hard rock, doom and heavy metal. If you're one of those people who sort their albums by genre, you might want to put this one somewhere between Motorhead, Kyuss, Alice In Chains and Soundgarden. But that's completely up to you. I sort my albums in a different way. I pile them up, with the ones I play most lying on top. 'Evil Or Divine' is currently moving up on the pile and might soon (especially by October when I'm preparing myself for Desertfest) end up somewhere near the very top.
The album opens with 'Masters and Slaves', a slow but powerful song, driving on Black-Sabbathian riffs. With clean but raw vocals and a decent grunge-feel, this quickly becomes one of my favorites on the album and thus an excellent choice to open this album. 'Sea Of Sin' takes the whole to a mid-tempo, nudging to old school heavy metal, both in music and vocals. This far in the album I'm actually hoping these guys will be included to the Desertfest bill. They will perfectly fit with all these stoner rock bands but also bring a bit of variation. Above all, it would be a tremendous orgy of riffs and headbanging.
From there on, the album continues in a similar fashion, with 'When Darkness Calls' being the so-called ballad. It's another slow song with a nice, gloomy atmosphere. Back at Deserfest, some people might light their lighters. They don't have to but it would be fun seeing something like that again. 'The Seer (Angel Of Death)' perfectly supplements that songs by opening with a similar riff before turning into a solid piece of stoner rock again.
My absolute favorite track is 'The Day The Sun Died', maybe because of the brilliant way it opens, maybe because of the great lyrics or maybe just because it's an outstanding doom song which blends the best of Soundgarden with the best of..., well, any vintage doom band for that matter. Fact is: this song just might blast this album into my best-of-2015 list, but I guess we'll have to see about that in a few months. Once again, this song is perfectly alternated with a solid rocker, named 'Evil Ways'. Old school heavy metal with a fuzzy edge.
The album closes with 'Presence', a song that reminds me of Sepultura's 'Kaiowas', obviously because of the acoustic guitars and tabla-percussion. However, this doesn't last very long. Gradually the song evolves into another very strong doom metal song and an excellent finale for this great album. So rockers of all ages: check this out, you won't be disappointed (unless you are a Nickelback fan but in that case you shouldn't have read this review anyway or visit our website).
Serge
Sideburn hails from Sweden and plays a stoner induced version of good old hard rock, doom and heavy metal. If you're one of those people who sort their albums by genre, you might want to put this one somewhere between Motorhead, Kyuss, Alice In Chains and Soundgarden. But that's completely up to you. I sort my albums in a different way. I pile them up, with the ones I play most lying on top. 'Evil Or Divine' is currently moving up on the pile and might soon (especially by October when I'm preparing myself for Desertfest) end up somewhere near the very top.
The album opens with 'Masters and Slaves', a slow but powerful song, driving on Black-Sabbathian riffs. With clean but raw vocals and a decent grunge-feel, this quickly becomes one of my favorites on the album and thus an excellent choice to open this album. 'Sea Of Sin' takes the whole to a mid-tempo, nudging to old school heavy metal, both in music and vocals. This far in the album I'm actually hoping these guys will be included to the Desertfest bill. They will perfectly fit with all these stoner rock bands but also bring a bit of variation. Above all, it would be a tremendous orgy of riffs and headbanging.
From there on, the album continues in a similar fashion, with 'When Darkness Calls' being the so-called ballad. It's another slow song with a nice, gloomy atmosphere. Back at Deserfest, some people might light their lighters. They don't have to but it would be fun seeing something like that again. 'The Seer (Angel Of Death)' perfectly supplements that songs by opening with a similar riff before turning into a solid piece of stoner rock again.
My absolute favorite track is 'The Day The Sun Died', maybe because of the brilliant way it opens, maybe because of the great lyrics or maybe just because it's an outstanding doom song which blends the best of Soundgarden with the best of..., well, any vintage doom band for that matter. Fact is: this song just might blast this album into my best-of-2015 list, but I guess we'll have to see about that in a few months. Once again, this song is perfectly alternated with a solid rocker, named 'Evil Ways'. Old school heavy metal with a fuzzy edge.
The album closes with 'Presence', a song that reminds me of Sepultura's 'Kaiowas', obviously because of the acoustic guitars and tabla-percussion. However, this doesn't last very long. Gradually the song evolves into another very strong doom metal song and an excellent finale for this great album. So rockers of all ages: check this out, you won't be disappointed (unless you are a Nickelback fan but in that case you shouldn't have read this review anyway or visit our website).
Serge