Soma is the debut album by this Bristol-based 3-piece dystopian rock band with a bit of a Huxley fixation and cool cover art - a close up of a black nipple. The review CD doesn't appear to play in the correct order which makes this review like a shoddy live one as I guess which tune is which!!
What bursts out of the speakers on the opener Master is sludgy riff-based hard rock with slight industrial overtones that had me thinking they reminded me a good bit of German Pre Rammstein industrial metal band Oomph! Or that band's controversial debut album at least.
D-IX is listed second, but The Sleeper Awakes seems to be the song actually playing judging by the lyrics of the pounding stoner rock with slack drums and gruff yelped vocals. The third song that should be Down The Hall but isn't is more stoner rock: a slow, grinding metal murder bruiser with a quite elastic-sounding bass.
Then what should be The Sleeper Awakes turns out to be Down the Hall. I'm getting confused and wondering if they have done this on purpose or the i-tunes is shuffling deliberately to disorient me. Either way this gets thrashy and speedier in its sleazy grinding way.
So what's listed but doesn't show named on I-tunes as Stranger To Saint I think is D-IX: a grungy low-down grind of a tune that's followed by the deep, dark and disturbing-sounding Separation. The vocals sound a good bit like Bernie Torme but with a heavier backing than Bernie normally has and a bit of a debt to Pixies' This monkey's Gone To Heaven in the music.
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Whatever the next song is - Mule or something else - it's a pretty urgent-sounding pounding riff monster of a tale. The next song speeds up a Joy Division riff with some screamed desperate vocals. It's good head-shaking music and there's a hell of a guitar solo.
The album then closes with the brilliantly-titled Seminal Semen. Said track opens with distorted guitars having a bit of an ejaculation of feedback before the grinding, slowly tossing riff comes in and the libidinal pounding begins trying to be dirtier and sleazier than Oomph's Suck Taste Spit. A song with similar subject matter. Possibly.
This is dark and grungy and not a little bit of a sticky end to a decent stoner metal album.
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