Here are some tips on how best to enjoy Domkraft’s Flood (Blues Funeral). If you have some rich Kush lying about then you may partake. It’s not essential, but I find it to be of great assistance. The following items, however, are vital. Find the comfiest chair in your apartment, an Acapulco shirt and a decent set of headphones. Don’t say I never did anything for you.

Once you’re set up let Flood’s amplification wash right over you. Rest easy in your chair as death by a thousand watts is beginning to set in. Let Martin Widholm’s groove-laden riffs and effects rich solos take you to your happy place. Stoner and Sludge metal of this grade you come to expect from some American swamplord, or hailing from rain-soaked Dorset, but Flood’s amplified fury is a Stockholm export. What does that prove? Well, it proves my theory that Sweden produces quality extreme music of all and any variety and we should all bow in their aura.

Scandinavian admiration aside, what makes Domkraft’s second LP so special is the power trio’s ability to make the most out of a limited but proven list of ingredients. Martin Wegeland, Anders Dahlgren and Widholm are all perfectly in sync and don’t waste an inch of song, but it’s certainly the latter’s album. Once the title track rolls around we’re knee deep into the sludge and can’t get enough of it. Widholm’s fat stacks of sound and Wegeland’s howling paints the portrait of a very stoner leaning Neurosis, but that melts away when the hypnotic pedal-driven solos borrow into your brain. Those leads and solos go for Tom Morello levels of effects insanity on the churning ‘Octopus.’ And I don’t want to make this sound like a complaint, but I am certainly curious as to what devilish combinations await on future releases if Domkraft decides to throw in some Moog synthetization or organs into the sludgy mix.

Now that the album is over don’t bother removing yourself from your chair. All I’ll say is you’re welcome.

8.0/10

HANS LOPEZ