Welcome back to Bandcamp Buried Treasure! See? I didn't abandon you! This is for real! So let's keep kicking off 2014 with sick metal! You know the rules of the article by now:
- I hunt down awesome artists on bandcamp that have their album up for Buy It Now/Free Download and give them a write up. I'm not explicitly telling you to download the album for free since I'm a big supporter of buying your music, but I like the option for my readership to be there.
- The goal is to introduce you to smaller bands or obscure side-projects you might not have heard of. Anything to expand your musical horizons by just a little bit each week!
- And of course, for there to be a conversation about similar bands or bands you think I should be covering. I check the comments section!
Like I said last time, I switched the format up a bit with two new sections, titled "The Basic Idea" and "Why I Love It." The former is a short news-style lead that paints a vivid picture of what you're about to hear to get you interested and help you understand a little why I chose the record, while the latter serves simply as a review piece.
So who's in the mood for some sludgy, spaced-out jams ala Snailking?
The Basic Idea
Snailking realize they're going to be on the same riff or idea for a while, so they either write something that stays interesting for an extremely long time or throw in variations of the theme to the point where it all seems to revolve around one centric idea without repeating itself forever. This is sludgy, fuzzy, colossally spaced-out doom metal done correctly.
Why I Love It
Despite Samsara only being three songs long, I love them all for one reason- there's never a dull moment. For instance, I'm listening to the opening track "Shelter" right now and I can probably count the amount of riffs and themes I've heard up to the seven-minute mark on one hand… and yet I haven't found myself bored or wondering when they next riff or vocal part is going to show up. The music is so well written and orchestrated that boredom is pretty much never an option.
The word "orchestration" is a good one to use when describing the record. Sure, there's only guitars, bass and drums going on as far as instrumentation, but the way they're voiced is phenomenal. Again looking at "Shelter" for an example, when one guitar is relying on spacey chorus and flanger effects, the other is solidly rooted in a crusty distorted tone to translate the riff between bass and guitar, while the bass sounds like the low end of a Hammond B3 chugging away with the drums. Later on in the song everything is distorted right to hell and sounds like it's breaking up… and it works so well. The breaking, crackled distorted tones of all the instruments working as one audible hammer creates this sonic titan that attacks and attacks and attacks without relent, but never damages or harms the listening experience.
Yeah, let's go with "sonic titan" as a descriptor for Samsara. It's a behemoth of slow moving, churning riffs that lumber forth toward the inner-most regions of your brain and fuzz everything out.
