Thursday, March 26, 2015

Acid King: Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere (2015)

Time for the quarterly female-fronted doom album! I’ve reviewed so many of these by now, I have nothing left to say about the combination of feminine vocals and slow, meaty riffs.

Specifically, Acid King play stoner doom. It’s slow, mellow, and repetitive. Sometimes trance-inducing, sometimes weird echo effects, but always with a general feeling of psychedelia. The vocals aren’t anything special in this case. She doesn’t have a smoky, sultry voice, or some kind of ethereal, ghostly presence. Her tone is earthy, and mostly ordinary, but still good.


Further description of the music wouldn’t do you a lot of good. The riffs are solid (“Coming Down from Outer Space,” especially). They pull a neat trick on “Silent Pictures,” where the heavy, smooth riffs pause while she’s singing, traded in for a higher-pitched drone as a backdrop to her voice. But really there’s nothing revolutionary about this album, nor should there be. The bottom line is, this music puts you in the mood that you want to be in when you hear stoner doom, and it doesn’t bore you in the process. That’s despite running nearly an hour, with tracks mostly clocking in around eight minutes apiece.

It is what it set out to be, and that’s a good thing.

The Verdict: 4 out of 5 stars



Svart Records

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