If there is one particular music that gets our mouths drooling at Desert Psychlist it is heavy psychedelic grooves edged with a good helping of doomic dankness and Washington, DC quintet Sorge provide just that with their self-titled debut opus "Sorge". The band, Christian (bass); Joshua (guitar/vocals); Mike (drums); Logan (lead guitar) and Jake (synths), call their sound "psychedelic stoner sludge & experimental fuzz doom metal from outer space" and it's not hard to see why they do.
Dark droning effects twinned with howling guitar and slow deliberate drumming introduces first track "Faith of a Heretic", accompanied by strong, clean impassioned vocals delivered in tones that teeter on the edge of gothic. As the song progresses it becomes obvious that Sorge are not your run of the mill doom band toying with lysergic textures but a band who are testing the borders of the doomic box they find themselves in and are busy looking for weaknesses in that box where they can stretch out and explore newer avenues. Swirling synths angular, often dissonant, guitar solo's that soar over shapeshifting doomic refrains colour each of the four songs that make up "Sorge", the band routinely taking off on unexpected musical tangents that are some times brutal and uncomfortable, sometimes uplifting and beautiful but nevertheless always interesting, Stoner doom can be a very limiting musical sub-genre in that it is often governed by expectations that it should be played low, slow and extremely heavy but Sorge don't adhere to those rules and are as just as likely to hit a groove that is up-tempo and thrash like as one that is agonisingly sedate and pondering, often in the same song.
Dank, dark heavy and atmospheric yet packed with a myriad of unexpected twists and turns along the way "Sorge" is an album that doesn't so much break all the rules as bends them into more interesting shapes.
Check it out ....
© 2020 Frazer Jones
Almost a Doomier Soundgarden a little harder which I always wanted Soundgarden to be
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