Necro Deathmort’s name suggests “death death death” and their Myspace classification is set to “grunge/grunge/grunge”, however their music is not even remotely either. In fact, if you dig deeper, the London duo consider themselves more drone doom than anything else quoting a major influence from early Earth. However, Necro’s eclectic pseudo-style is closer in spirit to the creepy electronica of Aphex Twin or cut and paste trip-hop of Coldcut although the predominant influence here would seem to be that of breakbeat alchemist DJ Shadow (from the Endtroducing era). The album’s title – This Beat is Necrotronic – clearly nods towards the retro-beat-electronica that saturates this collection.

Necro’s drone nestles quietly beneath the loops and breakbeats creating ambient tones reminiscent of a hip-hop inflected take Sunn O)))’s spookyscapes. Technicolour Minstrel Show is pure ambient, minimalist drone, while Hurt Me I’m Bored is a much more traditional doom affair with guitars and real drums dominating the lightly electronic undertones. On the brief Origami Werewolf the styles seem to mesh more cleanly and this is perhaps the coherent edge that this album needs to really shine. Final track The Ultimate Testament takes Boris style drone to its logical conclusion and is perhaps an allusion of the entropic nature of the universe in which we live.

It’s clear that Necro take their art with a pinch of salt. The Beat is Necrotronic is certainly creative, and its originality comes from the mix of styles, rather than the music itself. It is a playful work of ADHD genre noodling that will no doubt irritate the hell out of the genre purists (of all the various genre’s this record references) which is always a good thing. But if you alienate everyone, then what are you left with? Is this album just too damn erratic to be anything other than very niche? Or could this genre hopping opus please the wider audience?

All this aside, this motley assemblage of loops and doom really put a smile on my face, and it’ll certainly get heavy rotation on my iPod. Given I’m a fan of pretty much all the genres and artists mentioned here, this was guaranteed to entertain me. There’s a legion of folks out there with similar tastes out there, but we’re hard to pin down. If you stumble across this expecting drone, then keep an open mind. If you’re merely looking for something really fresh and thoroughly entertaining then look no further.

Listen to Necro Deathmort on Myspace

Buy the album here

Some bands are amazing on record, but can’t pull it off live while others are spectacular live, but don’t manage to capture this magic on record. Electric Wizard tend towards the latter category – somehow their bass laden, toxic cacophony never packs the punch it should on record. Live, on the other hand, they’re simply stunning.

Last night’s double dose of doom begun with label-mates Blood Ceremony from Canada. Basically Sabbath, if you swapped Tony Iommi with a flautist and Ozzy with a fit bird, they played an entertaining set of old school psychedelic doom. Singer Alia O’Brien dominates proceedings with her sultry pagan chants and multi-instrumentalism, although the band deliver some convincing old school noise, albeit with some Jethro Tull style jazzy flute. Blood Ceremony delivered a great performance, and the crowd really seemed to appreciate it, but it would be difficult to not be somewhat squished by what came next.

Electric Wizard don’t play live very often, and it’s not hard to see why. This short set of bludgeoning noise is delivered with immense amount of energy and conviction – with portly singer/guitarist Justin Oborn playing like his life depended on it and the commanding presence of sumptuous second guitarist Liz Buckingham adding a touch of class to the overall sweaty dingefest. Their music, hernia inducing on record, really comes alive on stage, and wow, that bass – I think it may have triggered the onset of osteoporosis for those in this little hall. The noise these guys create with their instruments is magnificent – the feedback they generate alone is worth turning up to hear – and where they can sometimes be ponderous on record, I found myself wishing these songs wouldn’t end.

This is a pretty big venue for the Wizard, but they dominated it like a band used to arenas. Strangely, the Scala is well lit, which  distracted from the overall ambience, and the folks enjoying the show the most were doing so with their eyes closed. The show ended after a hour and a quarter with (apparently typicaly) no encore – with the amount of energy they put into their performance it’s not hard to see why. Being left wanting more is better than being bored shitless, and although I left feeling slightly short changed, it’s hard to complain after seeing such an awesome show.

Never having seen the Wizard live before, they provided an amusing, but not essential, diversion on record, but having seen this show you now find me a convert. All hail the Wizard!

Metal is such a frenetic genre. It’s also frequently brutal, angular, angry and most of all noisy. Every now and again, purveyors of the true faith settle down, break out the bong and forget all about all that ADHD nonsense. I don’t mean slapping your balls on the table and wailing lyrical about the power of love. Sometimes you just gotta sloooow dooown dude.

Stoner legends Kyuss managed to capture this laid-so-far-back-you’re-looking-out-from-between-your-legs mood in a musical cloud of herbal smelling smoke with Space Cadet.

Nestling among various slabs of fuzzy, bass laden sludge on their stoner masterwork Welcome to Sky Valley, this unplugged anthem doesn’t hurry, it oozes. It sounds like it emerged from a weed fueled jam, congealing from the waxy, tar stained air, emanating from a basement; suppressed angst – a cleansing by music and sedatives.

The young Josh Homme delivers an acoustic solo that sounds like it burst from the base of his spine. When inhibitions are smudged away; when the fleshy barrier between self and instrument dissolves, such things can emanate.

Space Cadet made itself – a projection of man and miasma – and it is beautiful.

I stand alone on the cliffs of the world
No-one ever tends to me
Sitting alone covered in breeze
Some things are so my mind can breathe
Waiting is hard, fuckin’ takes so long
Draped in sun, hands in sand
Earth acid cleanses me, it cleanses me clean
But the world it never comes, it never comes
It never comes

Mastodon are a great band, so when folks started muttering about Baroness in the same context I should have taken notice. Generally I thought “here’s another stoner band with added Mastodon widdly bits” and filed on my stuff-to-listen-to-at-some-point list somewhere in the middle. This is why it has taken me so woefully long to get with the programme. To paraphrase in the vernacular – EPIC FAIL!

Yes, they do sound a bit like Mastodon – a driving flux of complex psychedelic guitar and complex arrangements. The bands also share a doom/prog lineage. But Baroness cast a mood that’s fundamentally different – although comparatively cerebral, Baroness effect a stoner slouch and southern groove which allows them a brightness that is nonexistent in their fellow Georgians’ music, and place them along side popier counterparts Torche.

The Red Album is bookended with 2 atmospheric instrumental sections. The opening ambient chimes of Rays on Pinion slow-builds into a glorious upbeat, up-tempo stomp before morphing into a part stoner, part punk bruiser. The sun sets on The Red Album with Grad, an azure and brooding post-rocker which recalls Earth, were they ever to have acquired delusions of grandeur.

What happens in between is a purposeful melange of vignettes and slabs of fully formed modern metal. Repeating motif’s subtly weave this ragtag mix into a primal tapestry.

The Birthing, with its southern stylings and dramatic midsection, is heavy and complex, while the stately Isak plods its chiming course through the stoner wasteland. The foreboding space rock of Wailing Wintery Wind is fancifully chased up by the storm-in-a-teacup fingerpicked acoustic Cockroach En Fleur – the first of a suite of elaborate but essential instrumental accessories completed by the post-rock doom of Aleph and Teeth of a Cogwheel, which is like a 70’s soundtrack for a movie about cowboys in space.

With Wunderlust, we’re are presented with the most Mastodon like moment, with guitars dual guitars picking through angular open stringed harmonies butted with shouted discordant vocals and a narrative instrumental mid section that Mastodon would surely have been proud of.

Baroness will need to step out from under Mastodon’s shadow to truly become a powerful musical force. It would be a travesty if they are relegated to a footnote in another bands musical history. The Red Album is as good as (and in many cases better than) anything that Mastodon have recorded.

I picked up a recommendation for Electric Mud Generator on a progressive rock thread on UKMU. Despite having released 2 albums these guys have managed to slip largely under the popular radar. Their music is an extremely fashionable mix of classic prog, prog metal and doom (with a little folk thrown in for good measure). The galloping doom of She Wore Thorns culminates into a very convincing Maiden-esque solo, while the brooding epic Winter evokes Rush and King Crimson and has a rousing chorus to die for. This is a territory I had expected Amplifier would start to occupy when the released their “difficult” second album Insider.

This release is somewhat timely, and I hope the world sits up and takes notice, as there’s plenty of deeply mediocre bands occupying this space at the moment.