Nethervault are a stoner doom trio formed in Madrid, Spain, the trio have next to no social media presence and what we have been able to find out about them has had to be gleaned from their Bandcamp page, but no matter we are here for the music and the music is good!
Nethervault are a band who like to keep things simple, their modus operandi is to deliver low slow heavy reverberating riffs and swirling guitar solo's over sparse but solid rhythms that are then coated in clean, ever so slightly mournful, vocals. There are only three tracks to be heard on "Nethervault" they are all lengthy tomes and each has its own unique charm and beauty. First of those tracks is "The Green Chamber" a song built around a ponderous and filthy bass/guitar riff enhanced by an uncomplicated but totally effective drum pattern with the vocal that accompanies this groove delivered in clean, mellow and melodic tones. Fans of stoner doom will of course revel in the the songs heaviness and its lowness and slowness but for Desert Psychlist the song really comes into its own in those brief moments when the guitar cuts through the gloom and is allowed to soar, those moments are few and far between but they are well worth waiting for. "Midas' Fever" follows and is an instrumental that highlights the trios more lysergic leanings, the song is again underpinned by low slow heavy riffage but where on "The Green Chamber" the guitar solos seemed almost like an afterthought here they have the starring role, swirling and swaying with exotic promise over the songs deep throbbing bass lines and pummelling steady percussion, the guitar tones an enthralling mixture of clean and pristine and distorted and dirty. The band brings things to a close with "The Spiral" a dark chugging riff fest with Sabbath-esque undertones drenched in fuzz and distortion that is once again graced with a mellow, melodic vocal around which the songs crunching refrains swell and wane, those refrains taken to another level by the insertion of some scorching blues flavoured lead work.
If you analyse each element that goes into Nethervault's sound separately you will find not much to set them apart from many others ploughing the same desolate fields of stoner doom, the pummelling percussion, the monolithic riffs and low growling bottom end are all very much in place and the songs all have that low, slow and heavy dynamic much loved by fans of the genre. It is however when all those elements are weaved together and decorated with those mellow clean vocals and swirling lysergic laced guitar solos that the real magic begins to happen and you start to realise that "Nethervault" is actually not stoner doom played by the numbers but is in fact something quite special and unique.
Check it out ....
© 2021 Frazer Jones
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