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DESERT LORD
To The Unknown

Under A Serpent Sun (2014)
Rating: 7/10

I’ve always wondered what it would sound like if Black Sabbath and Motörhead gave birth to a son, but in Desert Lord I think we have the answer… to some extent. This Finnish quartet plays catchy doom metal with an oily, aggressive edge, especially in the vocal department of Sampo Rhiihimäki and the robust bass plods of Roni Dahlgren.

To The Unknown is their first album and features six lengthy tracks resulting in the hour-long duration, which for me can be a touch overbearing on the soul and the ears. However, it still makes for a weighty listen as Desert Lord merge the groove-based business of Corrosion Of Conformity, elements of grunge, and doomier segments.

It’s not a groundbreaking album by any sense of the word, but by the time ‘Forlorn Caravan’ (why do so many bands use the word “caravan” in their titles?) opens up this event, I’m rather hooked and then eventually snared by the stoned fuzz of Janne Kuosmanen’s guitar, which pretty much soaks up the doom-by-numbers knowledge, yet complements Sampo Rhiihimäki’s rather aggressive hisses and snarls.

‘Forlorn Caravan’ works mostly because it’s only around five minutes in length, so the black waves of riffage barely have the time to drag on and on across that grey beach before it’s all over. I feel that the band should have taken this into consideration with the rest of the tracks, most of which run close to the ten-minute mark.

The best of these is the sprawling blackness that is ‘Wonderland’, with its aching introduction of oil-slick dissonance and reverb laced with a trudging troll-like drum and stark bas quality. The issue, however, is that it seems to take an age for the song to alter its pattern in spite of the psych-fused guitars and Rhiihimäki’s throaty rasps.

The two other nine-minute monsters on the record are ‘Expanding Egos’ and ‘Become Aware’. The former displays subtle qualities with its opening acoustic segment before lurching into a cosmic quicksand sludge of buzzing bass and nodding drum. Somewhere between Sabbath and dirty grunge, Desert Lord are a talented bunch which rarely labours due to their nods towards traditional metal and those previously mentioned influences.

‘Become Aware’ is of the same monolithic traipse as Rhiihimäki barks, “In these dark times…” over a sullen riff that wouldn’t seem out of place on a Saint Vitus slab of doom. Although boasting little variation, ‘Become Aware’ is the album’s truest cut when it comes to doom metal; the riff rolls with menace and the drum slams down like the foot of a brontosaurus.

Although kept simple, there is an air of the murk about proceedings, somehow hinting at the syrupy darkness of Alice In Chains with added bass sauce, and with the durable booms of ‘New Dimensions’ and the thunderous haze of ‘Manic Survivor’s Song’ I’m finding myself unexpectedly addicted to this gargantuan portion of dirt.

To The Unknown may have benefitted by having shorter as well as more songs, but with ease it fuses grit, grunge and doom, and for that I praise the Lord.

Neil Arnold

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