Over the years there have been many albums that have taken inspiration from Frank Herbert's Dune novels and today we take a look at another, this one from a Turkish stoner-doom trio going by the name of GodBud. GodBud may have taken their name from a hybrid strain of marijuana but the two massive songs they present to us on their latest album "Sermons of Sand" are pure Dune and are particularly centred around the novels mysterious witch-like sisterhood known as the Missionaria Protectiva, a powerful religious sisterhood tasked with spreading superstition among the Dune universe's more primitive cultures. Right, we have filled you in on the concept lets get on with talking about the music.
Studying the artwork gracing many of the
Dune novels you will no doubt notice similarities between that artwork and the "
weedian" imagery associated with the legendary
stoner doom band
Sleep, similar desert landscapes and similar heavily cowled figures wearing remote facial apparatus. Given those similarities it should come as no surprise to find that
GodBud's Dune inspired two track album also shares similar musical dynamics to those of their
Californian brethren, employing heavy low tuned repetitive riffs and slow deliberate pounding rhythms to create an almost mediative/spiritual feel to their grooves. This is especially noticeable on the albums first song "
Reverend Mothers" where the band combine those leaden rhythms and thrumming refrains with monophonic vocal harmonies that tell us of a sisterhood tasked with "
roaming a thousand planes" and informing us that "
only the righteous gene is fit to breed the nun supreme" against a backdrop of
doomic groove that is constantly evolving but remains anchored to solid ground by its low slow and heavy aesthetics. Second and final song "
Black Arm of Superstition" opens with a crunching bass and guitar refrain, supported by thunderous drumming, that feels like it is liable to collapse under its own weight at any moment, this tsunami of thrumming dark groove is then joined by vocal harmonies that would sound
Gregorian if it were not for the fact they are pitched slightly higher. Things start to get a little more strident as we approach the songs halfway mark, the drumming gets a little more more busy and elaborate and the bass adopts a fuzzier growlier tone all of which sets the scene for some incendiary guitar pyrotechnics before the band briefly plummet back into the songs initial low slow and monolithic groove only then to suddenly take off into the stratosphere again, the band finally bringing things to a close in a mixture of both dynamics.
You might think that to truly enjoy GodBud's "Sermons of Sand" you would need to be an avid reader of Frank Herbert's novels, YOU DO NOT!. It is true that having some background knowledge will give you an insight into both songs lyrical content but that is all really, its the music and its groove and not the concept that are the important things here and GodBud's music DOOMS!
Check it out ....
© 2023 Frazer Jones
No comments:
Post a Comment