If you like your riffs on the repetitive and circular side, your rhythms sedate crushing and thunderous and your vocals delivered in voice that is a mix between an angry Orc and a Marvel supervillain then you are going to go apeshit when you get a load of Portland, Oregon trio Sandkrawler's self titled debut "Sandkrawler". The band, who go by the names Ur’rik Bruk’bawa (drums); D’ruw Stemm’ler (guitars) and M’ark Wyy’ka (bass/vocals), have what some might suggest is an unhealthy obsession with all things Star Wars so much so that they regularly appear on stage dressed as oversized Jawa's while also having a tendency to salt their heavy stoner doom/sludge songs with sampled narration lifted straight from George Lucas' celebrated franchise. Now given that information you might be fooled into expecting something a touch on the comedic side, maybe a bit naff and silly, but these guys take their music seriously and what they present us with on "Sandkrawler" is some pretty impressive, if a little tongue in cheek, low'n'heavy stoner doom played with real conviction.
Things start noisily and heavy with "Black Cloak", guitar tones here are dialled to crushing and are buoyed by low growling bass and pounding drums over which low gravelled vocals tell the tale of Anakin Skywalker's gradual shift towards the dark side and his revenge for his mothers death on a tribe of Tuskan Raiders. The songs groove throughout is kept at just a few notches above low'n'slow and boasts a Sleep-like "weedian" vibe albeit one with a story set in an entirely different universe. Next song "Blizzard's Grip" uses "Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back" as its theme with mentions of Tauntauns (a reptile /mammal hybrid) and Luke Skywalker's brush with a frozen death set against a backdrop of throbbing stoner doom punctuated with sampled beeps and whistles from R2D2 and decorated in low throaty vocals. For their next song "Force Echoes" Sandkrawler take us to Tatooine the desert home of both Anakin/Darth Vadar and Luke Skywalker, the groove here is achingly low, slow and heavy but here we find the vocals limited to a few lines with a greater reliance placed on sampled movie narrative. Title track "Sandkrawler" is next and sees the guitar tones take on a more fuzzy and fitting desert rock dynamic, still pitched low'n'slow and doomic but with a little more added grittiness. Final song "200 Tons of Steel" is pure delight from start to finish, the song utilising samples of Han Solo's voice, R2D2's beeps and Chewbacca's distinctive gargle to flesh out a grindingly heavy ode to the Millennium Falcon, and who could possibly not love a song featuring the lyric "200 tons of steel, Wookie at the wheel"
Some might dismiss the use of the Star Wars franchise as a concept for an album as being slightly frivolous and possibly a bit nerdy but those same people will happily buy into Sleep's "Dopesmoker" despite the fact that "Dopesmoker" lift's much of its imagery from Frank Herbert's Dune. Sandkrawler might use Star Wars themes and samples as the basis for their songs, and as part of their on stage imagery, but musically they doom ..and doom hard.
Check 'em out....
This sounds interesting but with no physical formats a lot of metal fans are going to be turned off! Ok if CDs and vinyls are not in your bands budget a cassette will be a great alternative. If I can't hold it in my hands then I don't buy it!😡
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