ALBUM REVIEW: Last Knell of Om – Morag Tong
London based stoner doom band MORAG TONG are easily one of the best bands that you’ve (most likely) not heard of currently carving out a name for themselves in the UK underground. Having already made waves with the debut EP, Through Clouded Time, this four piece have expertly laid down some incredibly solid foundations on which to build an excellent back catalogue of music. With their debut full length, Last Knell of Om finally seeing the light of day, the band are taking their palpable and impressive brand of doom to even greater heights.
Transmission opens this record on a suitably powerful note. It’s a slow burning instrumental track, with steady, pattering drums acting as a great back drop to fuzzy, distortion heavy guitar and bass lines. It’s an incredibly mellow track, with the music having more ambience than you would expect from a doom metal record. It nails the transcendental, stoner vibes quite well, and sucks the listener in with sparse yet ethereal hooks and hypnotic rhythms. It’s far from the heaviest track, but it does a great job of grabbing your attention and setting the tone for the rest of the album. New Growth provides much more palpable, beefy riffs and tones for the listener to sink their teeth into, without losing any of the trance-like metre of the first track. With thick, sludgy bass hooks and dense, crunching guitars, it’s a decidedly heavier offering, with cleaner tones and haunting vocals being utilised throughout, giving this track a very sublime feel in amongst it’s more intense, epic moments. It’s an excellent track that does a great job of illustrating the bands darker side.
We Answer, with its bleak dissonant opening motif, is another great track that pairs a morose musical approach with spaced out, airy tones. The music flows really well, and each component of the song, from the drums and bass through to the guitars and vocals, has plenty of room to breath and be heard. The bass parts in particular sound great, with a noticeably robust, tar-like tone that complements the laid back, almost shoe-gaze quality of the guitars. The drums set an excellent, hypnotic pace, and all of this is shrouded perfectly in a hazy atmosphere that is only amplified by the misty and eclectic vocals that pepper this track.
To Soil takes the listener back down a much darker, more sludge route that was on display during New Growth; with droning, oppressively distorted bass hooks, equally sonorous guitar lines and minimalist, primal drum patterns, it’s easily the heaviest track on the record up until this point. It’s much closer to then traditional stoner doom aesthetic and sound, without fully embracing it. It still has a palpable atmosphere shrouding it, which helps break up the relentless funereal dirge and utterly ferocious sound of the bulk of the song.
The fifth, penultimate track, Ruminations, is a fairly short piece of music that helps to break up the record and build towards the album’s final track. It’s a very solid slab of epic sounding, hypnotic music that slowly gains momentum as it moves along, with more guitar lines creeping in as it reaches its apex. Other than a few lines, there is very little vocal wise, but this allows the music to take centre stage and transfix the listener. It’s a great way to build towards the album’s climactic moments. Ephemera – Stare Through the Deep is an absolutely monolithic track that slowly but surely gathers intensity and power as it progresses. Initially only comprising of brilliant, fluid sounding drums, the song proper does not begin in earnest until close to the three minute mark, with subdued, ethereal guitar chords and dense bass hooks coming into the fray, adding to the trance-like state of the music even further and creating an amazing atmosphere. The song gets treated to some classic rock style guitar lines towards its closing moments, which provide a nice change of pace before it heads back into its main motif, closing the album in a sea of fuzz and ambient distortion.
This is an exemplary record from MORAG TONG in many regards; the musicianship, the production and the engrossing atmosphere all come together to create one of the best debut stoner records in recent memory. If you are the sort of person who likes your stoner doom to be full to bursting with riffs and guitar solos, then we doubt this is something you will be able to get invested in. However, it has a unique ambience and enough superlative compositions to make this a stand out record in its own right. MORAG TONG have done an excellent job of setting the bar incredibly high for themselves straight out of the gate, and it will be intriguing to see how their next record will surpass it.
Rating: 8/10
Last Knell of Om is out now via self-release.
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