Imagine yourself enclosed in a space of hovering marijuana smoke with a fully packed bong in hand and sounds of sludgy, doom metal filling the space between your ears. The swelling and spinning of your head and brain overcome you while your neck bangs downward and back up in a repetitive motion. Unable to stop and completely mesmerized by the slicing guitars, throbbing bass and pounding drums, you become totally encompassed in a daze.
These thoughts may rekindle those Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer days of the early ‘70s. Or they may resonate in current times with the likes of the devastatingly heavy High on Fire or doom metal sledgemasters Witch. Regardless, each period of heavy metal mirrors the other with sounds hauntingly similar in style and content.
Enter Kemado Records’ A&R rep Keith Abrahamsson with his idea to release an 18-track compilation full of bands of this ilk. The collection entitled Invaders traces its roots directly back to those early ‘70s times of all things obsessed with Black Sabbath.
With the current wave of bands bringing back this psychedelic laced neo-metal, the compilation couldn’t have been timed any better.
Invaders presents many of the hot media darlings of today—Wolfmother, The Sword, and Dungen and combines it with some new cookie-cutter revitalists in Kemado’s repretroir, Danava, Diamond Nights and the heavily distorted riff-mongers Warhammer 48K.
Evidently, the main requirement for inclusion on this collection is anything with a significant amount weight in their guitars. Whether brutally slow, fuzzed-out or just purely classic ‘70s psychedelic, the disc represents retro-stoner metal at it finest.
So if you’re down for something vintage or the more-updated Down styled marijuana fueled metal, Invaders is a must have. Otherwise relish with whatever accentuates your stoner vibe most effectively.
