It probably says a lot more about my own musical preferences than any kind of emerging movement but I do seem to have spent an AWFUL amount of time during 2015 listening to doom metal. It seems that barely a week can pass without stumbling over another band gloriously in love with Black Sabbath and finding new ways to twist and subvert that great bands art and reputation for new audiences. Whilst I bow to no-one in my admiration for this, it can sometimes feel like deja-vu when another album arrives, replete with sixties styled album cover and riffs the size of ocean liners.
It was with this thought in mind and a degree of perhaps understandable trepidation that I approached the self-titled album from Holy Serpent. Before you assume that I’m about to get all cynical and hyper-critical can I indulge your patience and time a little longer, dear reader? Let me be clear; you need this record. You probably don’t think you do, but yes, yes you do. Holy Serpent are a class act. Trust me on this one – I promise you, you will thank me.
Melbourne’s Holy Serpent are at the very psychedelic end of the doom metal spectrum but what’s compelling about this record is it’s lightness of touch and graceful inspiration. The band’s low-end fuzziness is determined and hypnotic, coaxing the listener into a bliss-laden trance of metronomic brilliance. Clearly, like all doom metal bands, this is a band in love with Black Sabbath; what I was perhaps less expecting was a cumulative effect that was not dissimilar in its trippiness and woozy, aural dynamics that one gets from their fellow countrymen Tame Impala. Don’t get me wrong, these bands inhabit very different universes but their understanding of how to discombobulate the listener is clear and pronounced.
On the obviously drug induced ‘Shroom Doom’ or ‘Fools Gold’, there is a trance-like aesthetic running through the songs that is hard to resist, so we don’t, but more than that, Holy Serpent (RidingEasy) conjures a truckload of creative and innovative imagination and puts it firmly to good and effective use. On the eleven minute ‘The Plague’ you have a startling realisation of how ambitious this band are and then, once you factor in how young these guys are, the level of potential that they have is absolutely jaw dropping.
Holy Serpent are confident without being arrogant, respectful without being facsimile, trippy without being self-consciously arch. It’s a record that you will keep coming back to and a record that will easily sit alongside those from which it has taken its rich inspiration.
8.0/10
MAT DAVIES