Let us introduce you to Sign of the Sorcerer, a trio from Knoxville, Tennessee consisting of Sky Brooks (guitar/vocals); Justin Hembree (bass) and Josh Watts (drums), who describe their sound as "downer rock" and "music for the grave" while also telling us that their debut album, "Obsessions of the Vile", has the propensity to "eat you alive and leave your veins dry".
"Necropsychodelia" kicks off "Obsessions of the Vile" its intro utilising orchestral samples, probably lifted from some obscure horror B movie, before then erupting into a dank heavily distorted slow to mid-tempo doomic groove spliced with choppy WAH drenched guitar textures and a vocal that sits somewhere between sinister demonic growling and throatily whispered narration. Any doom band worth their weight in grooves are sometime in their careers going to pen a tribute to the red dude with the horns and the tail and Sign of the Sorcerer are no exception to that rule and so we are presented with "Satan's Choice" a gnarly slice of psychedelic heaviness built around a rumbling bass and guitar riff pushed hard by thundering percussion over which the deeply buried in the mix vocals take on a more grainy tone. Up next is "Black Night 666" a stoner doomic juggernaut with recurring guitar motif's that sounds a little like something Welsh doomsters Dope Smoker might have attempted if they had swapped their weed for something a little more morphine based. "Meth Queen" follows and here we find the band ramping up the dankness and adding an extra level of menace by running the vocals through effects to give them a feeling of liquidity. Things are brought to a close with "Nosferatu" an epic blend of leaden stoner doominess and dank gnarly psych that allows the guitarist to show us the full range of his effects and that WAH pedals are not just the territory of the funksters, they can DOOM too!
Desert Psychlist has been accused in the past of overusing the word "gnarly" when describing music but in the case of "Obsessions of the Vile" it is difficult not to because what Sign of the Sorcerer present to us with their debut album is some of the filthiest, heavily distorted proto-doom you are likely to encounter this year, this is "gnarly" with a capital G!
Check it out ....
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