ALBUM REVIEW: Doomsday Goes Away – Haystack
Swedish punky noise rock unit HAYSTACK return with Doomsday Goes Away, their first album in five years, and the follow-up to The Sacrifice which amps up that album’s blues-infused garages rock vibes to the next level. While the noise rock that has always been the basis for the sound of HAYSTACK remains, there is once again an air of melody and melancholic blues wrestling for control at the height of their sound. With the band’s line-up now consisting of guitarist/vocalist Ulf Cederlund (who is best known as a founding member of death metal legends ENTOMBED as well as playing in Swedish D-Beat heroes DISFEAR and his own SWARM OF SOULS project) joined by drummer Jonas Lundberg and bassist Patrik Thorngren, this trio deliver a collection of melodically-inclined noise-laden anthems on an album that definitely shows the growth of HAYSTACK as a band.
The title track kicks things off with a bang and it is obvious straight away that HAYSTACK are back and mean business. From then on in it’s a nonstop rollercoaster of punked-up, garage blues-infected noise rock anthems. Dark Nothing follows and by this early point it already feels as though HAYSTACK have never been away. Neglected slows down the pace to a macabre crawl but what it drops in energy it more than amps it up with menace and the results are undeniably fantastic.
The garage stomp of both Wastemakers and Burning Eye bring those energy levels up again and sound like an angrier and noisier version of ROCKET FROM THE CRYPT and feel all the better for it. Burning Eye in particular, in all its life affirming glory, is a ready-made anthem that will surely set the place alight if and when HAYSTACK play the song live. Blame adds an element of angst-laden gritty rock to proceedings with its driving edge, while the grinding noise of The Ban keeps the quality flowing relentlessly and that song segues into the more discordant Going Under which shows another side of the HAYSTACK sound with an unharnessed energy that really elevates the track.
Doomsday Goes Away concludes with the noise-induced primal scream of Freak and the anthemic groove-laden closer Winter, which ends the album on a triumphant high, complete with an all important wave of howling feedback to truly round things off. When it is all over, and you can take it all in, you really appreciate how good an album this is and one that takes in a whole host of sounds, all melded together and combined to make HAYSTACK what they are. Doomsday Goes Away is a brilliant album and demonstrates exactly what a great band HAYSTACK are and they have absolutely nailed their sound here on a life-affirming and truly energetic record.
Rating: 8/10
Doomsday Goes Away is set for release on February 9th via Threeman Recordings.
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