ALBUM REVIEW: Smoking Mountain – deathCAVE
Most press images of DEATHCAVE depict the trio’s performances confined to a compact stage just wide enough to house Benny Koslosky’s drumkit – their debut LP, however, paints a more expansive vista of wicked wretches from hell soaring amongst skies of psychedelic riff-fuelled mania. Kolosky and DEATHCAVE remaining combatants, Freiburger [bass, vocals] and Tony Muñoz [guitars, vocals)] have toiled in the underground and – with aid of a self-titled EP in 2019 – garnered a following of partisan fans and critics alike. With such momentum already at the band’s feet, hurling themselves into the deep-end with a full-length album was a bold, yet auspicious undertaking for the budding trio. Now, as the Smoking Mountain looms overhead, it will surely be the record to launch the band beyond their modest acclaim with five serpentine singles that pose an indisputable argument for their blend of doom, thrash with a strong indulgence for psychedelia.
These labels, thrash, doom, psychedelic – they’re not simply thrown about to flesh out the record’s promo bio; Smoking Mountain is genuinely striking in its diversity. With runtimes rarely dipping beneath the seven-minute mark, DEATHCAVE gives themselves the breathing room to erect elaborate road maps that – in a matter of five tracks – hurls listeners through swathes of thick, sludge-dripping riffs, a medley of coarse vocals and enough rhythmic u-turns to give a mountain troll whiplash. It feels like being dragged through a frostbitten valley encompassed by vertiginous and jagged peaks whilst the heavens shift and bend with kaleidoscopic tendencies, and it sounds fantastic.
The record’s opening title-track asserts these visuals without much hassle. It’s a guns-blazing approach that does well to propel itself forward into a canter by way of its thrash-drawn influences until we ascend to the peak where the trio erupt into a riotous hook. From here on in the path is jagged, unforgiving and rarely predictable – an attitude that DEATHCAVE lavishly applies to the remainder of this intrepid voyage – but there is the odd moment where the magic appears to run dry; if only for a moment.
These ‘moments’, most noticeable on the title track and 12-minute epic The Seer, come as moments of stagnation as the band writes themselves into a corner of monotony and repetition. The band possessed the ingenuity to sandwich these hiccups within the track’s third quarter, relinquishing the songs from leaving a bitter aftertaste, but they still come across as awkwardly spartan when stacked against the album’s otherwise lofty standards. If there’s any positives to reap from this misstep, however, is that the hypnotic repetitions do allow time to admire the record’s robust production. In this sector, Smoking Mountain comes as a sum of its genre-fusing parts. Placing the muscle of guitar up-front (with both lead and bass sporting exquisite tones of fuzz and crunch) while Kolosky’s drumkit rounds out the mids with Freiburger and Muñoz’s vocals baked at an almost black metal depth within the mix. Emphasising the subterranean chugs on more doom-orientated tracks like Last Breath and effectively raising blood pressures on feverish excerpts from Poisonous Wizard – the record posits an approachable but harsh mix of ear-bashing.
DEATHCAVE truly have momentum behind their name, and others are clearly taking notice. The record’s three guest vocalist performances, then, come as a shock to no-one with Dave Verellen of BOTCH lending his vocal cords for The Road, Andrea Vidal from HOLY GROVE taking some angelic aural real estate on The Seer and BLACK BREATH’s Neil McAdams filling Poisonous Wizard with his sour rasps; not a bad line up right? It’s not like they’ve simply grabbed their mate Bob who could ‘happen to sing’. No. It’s fairly patent that the band’s time bubbling amongst the underground has not gone unheard. The features, beyond serving up DEATHCAVE some justified underground cred, amplify it’s already grand scale to immense proportion by gifting this already well replete soundscape further density. As one would imagine from reading this, DEATHCAVE rarely puts a foot wrong on their debut. Is there the odd nit to pick? Sure. There is arguably fat to be trimmed around the edges, sometimes the guitars can occasionally smother the vocal track a tad and some may see the band’s use of delay pedals as a little gimmicky but what are these if not the endearing quirks of a debut album.
Poised to make those waves, and break a few boundaries on the way, DEATHCAVE is clearly an upcoming force of unbridled reckoning. It’s a modest offering, five tracks at just over 40-minutes, but these are strong, consistent numbers that open up doors to boundless potential; both in style and in scale. It’s bands like DEATHCAVE that re-inject vitality into the underground and passion for the years of music to come as these great foundations could very well blossom into something even greater. Doom, thrash and psychedelic rock, they are not sounds expected to match with congruence but Smoking Mountain proves it’s possible; DEATHCAVE should be watched with very close attention.
Rating: 8/10
Smoking Mountain is out now via Satanik Royalty Records.
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