Since their inception in 2011, Colorado Sludge trio In The Company Of Serpents have slowly but noisily gone about making a serious name for themselves in the Stoner Doom scene. With four albums already under their belts, the fifth comes in the shape of an independently released behemoth, A Crack In Everything.
Focused around a slow, grinding Black Sabbath riff with so much bottom end it sounds like Mastodon uprooting a rain forest, opener “Don’t Look In The Mirror” is a perfect indicator as to where the next forty-odd minutes are heading. Frontman Grant Netzorg‘s hoarse vocals match the sludgy mood perfectly while a bluesy middle section with great sticksmanship from drummer Andy Thomas breaks things up before returning to the crushing Doom.
“A Patchwork Art” opens with semi-distorted notes and rolling drums before simple stabs of bass and Ben Pitts‘ guitar punctuate the verses. As the song heads into southern blues territory, another slow and powerful driving riff dominates the cut along with some syrupy gutturals from Netzorg. Almost a relief from the pummeling low-end throbbing, “Delirium” is a brief acoustic interlude before the jangling notes of “Cinders” metamorphoses into more earth-moving riffery, and a blues edge which could almost be considered jaunty.
Including guest vocals from Goya’s Jeff Owens, the explosive “Endless Well” finds its musical roots in the Captain Beefheart song “Moonlight On Vermont” while the lyrics are about wishing for an apocalypse to wipe the slate clean. After The Doors-style opening of “Buzzard Logic,” the song soon becomes another slow crawl towards crushing Doom by means of a strange mid-song shuffle and a hazy outro. Sort of like Crowbar playing quirky funeral music.
“Tremens” is another acoustic intermission while “Until Death Darkens Our Door” is clean-picked and dark as absolute fuck with Nertzog sounding like Nick Cave meeting Leonard Cohen for a night of whispered nihilistic philosophy and existential dread. The album ends on a suitably crushing note with
“Ghosts On The Periphery,” an unwieldy Sludge-encrusted curtain-closer that ends with a Spaghetti Western outro.
The riffs are simple but huge, the production makes the whole thing heavier than a sack of spanners, and the overall effect is undeniably compelling. If you want to experience being pulped by a herd of slowly stampeding elephants then just listen to A Crack In Everything.
Buy the album here:
https://inthecompanyofserpentsdoom.bandcamp.com/album/a-crack-in-everything
8 / 10
GARY ALCOCK
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