There’s some sort of doom/stoner movement going on in
Québec right now with a small scene resurging from the dank abyss to
create weed fueled riffs. The doom/stoner vibe from the province was
mostly due to Max Tremblay from The Death Wheelers, Strange Broue and
Marécages. Tremblay also runs Brouemaster Visual Decay and provides
art for many bands, even international ones like Haunt or Idle Hands.
He, of course, did the art for both Lochness and Marécages. I like
his art, always colourful but also always pretty grim and dark, it’s
full of contrasts!
Lochness – Black Smokers (2019)
First Puff - 83%
Lochness, now, eh!
The Montréal trio plays slow, thundering doom/stoner with a definite
aquatic feel. Composed of Alban Bachand and Mathias two tattoo
artists from the Ligne Verte shop (awesome spot!) and Tony Ross from
Aiauasca (also into tattoos!), the power trio really surprised
me with the quality of this release. Compared to most doom/stoner,
it’s not overlong and it has a distinctive and interesting identity
other than the commonly used “blaze it 420” one. Lochness are all
about the pressuriezed heaviness of the deep sea and how foreign and
alien that mysterious part of the world is. The album starts with a
long seven minutes instrumental track that really shows the colours
of what the band is all about. They’re not heavily focused on
vocals usually (Ross handles both the drums and the vox) and they
also dig the use of samples. When there’s vocals, they’re
unhinged and they feel like they’re underwater (check out “Alien
Deep”), it’s oddly fitting.
The guitars of
Fortier are loud and strong and like American traditional tattooing,
it’s bold and there to stay as Black Sabbath foretold. Their
songwriting is quite loose and natural, their songs are long but busy
with riffs. It’s never boring or overly slow and “atmospheric”.
They do like repetitiveness though but they’re good enough to
achieve a form of riff hypnosis.
All in all, Lochness delivers a compact thirty-five minutes opus full of huge tones. I’m usually bored by most stoner/doom but they had enough originality to distinguish themselves from the pack. I’ll go swim in the Lochness, I hope I’ll see you there.
All in all, Lochness delivers a compact thirty-five minutes opus full of huge tones. I’m usually bored by most stoner/doom but they had enough originality to distinguish themselves from the pack. I’ll go swim in the Lochness, I hope I’ll see you there.
Marécages - Marais Juana - Une Ode Cannabique (2019)
Second Puff - 4x20=80%
Speaking of
Marécages (swamps), their debut EP is literally a brick made of frozen weed.
Max Tremblay (The Death Wheelers, Strange Broue) is joined by Seb
Dallaire and Christian Labrecque (AKA Crock 0))) haha) both
known from grind bands like Fistfuck and Mesrine and together, they
had a lot of fun on this release. The artwork is striking and
amusing, it’s just a really big frog that would eat if you were
small enough. Frogs and toads eat everything, they’re like me at an
all you can eat sushi restaurant.
Their song titles
are full of portmanteaus like “Cannabysse” and their lyrics are
all in French (always happy to see that), it’s massively fun. The
opening song “Marais Juana” is also exactly 4:20, hopefully on
purpose. Their metal is aggressive, not too dissimilar to the
Hochelaga approach of Dopethrone in a way. It’s dirty
sludge/stoner/doom with a really thicc groovy bass, riffs made of
rusty steel and bludgeoning drumming played by a madman who hasn’t
slept in weeks. Their vocals are, of course, harsh as hell and sounds
like a resin infested worm in the best way possible. The use of
samples about weed and horror movies is also on point, I personally
liked the one about krokodil a lot!
The EP is tight and
goes hard. It sounds like a big toad rumbling in a swamp looking for
some tasty worms and flies. It doesn’t sound like they’re on
weed... Well maybe marijuana laced with cocaine, acid and PCP...
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