Bomg - Polynseeds (2013) | 43%

Seedless

I'm getting quite difficult for doom metal these days, it's pretty damn hard to really succeed at this genre as it doesn't really rely on technical abilities and it's pretty much all about atmosphere especially for doom/stoner. Bomg from Russia plays this genre and unfortunately, they fail at it.

It's pretty drawn out doom/stoner metal with some psychedelic influences. The sound of the album is not that much problematic, it's rather the execution. After a three minutes intro, the album has four massive tracks ranging from twelve to nineteen minutes and fuck, it's just mindlessly too long. Furthermore, the quality of the songwriting is nowhere near the length of the songs, it's boring and mundane. The songs are pretty much what you would expect, not a lot of riffs (not a lot of good ones too), buried vocals which are not quite good and over all, simply generic.

I had huge expectations for the album when I saw the cover art. I knew I had to listen to it and so I contacted the band and asked the band to provide a download. Nevertheless, I couldn't get into their stuff. It's not as adventurous or natural as the art. I was expecting something very atmospheric or even forested, a stoner counterpart to Gods Tower perhaps. But nah, the production is maybe a bit lush but it's not heavy enough, not emotional enough, not distorted or psychedelic enough, It's just...boring. It starts and after more than one hour it's over, I felt nothing but annoyance. There's too much useless feedback, repeated riffs, under-produced vocals completely interred and uninteresting riffs. An atmosphere like that can work in the hands of master musicians like on Electric Wizard's seminal album Dopethrone. Writing interesting fifteen minutes songs is a challenge and while there's some enjoyable parts like on the longest track ''Sannikov Land'' it's obscured by a lot of mundane stuff. It's not bad and if you like the genre you'll probably spend a good time listening to the album, I heard it tree times and it was way too much for me since I grasped everything on there quite quickly since well, there's not much going on.

I'm perhaps too harsh but mediocrity is annoying,  some bands with weak songwriting make up for it by being heavy as fuck and bludgeoning your grandmother with her own skull but it's not the case here. It's not offensively bad, guys it's just mediocre and I was fooled by the pretty wrapping like when I first tried an awful salt and sweet candy. Burdened by long ass tracks, the band has difficulties at establishing a vivid sound of their own, it's middle of the road doom/stoner and it doesn't pass the Tony test. It's their first album so perhaps things can improve and I hope they do.

There's a guitarist, a drummer, a singer and a drummer, I guess. They can play their instruments and seem to have some fun, I simply had none. There's better doom around people. Check Stoned Jesus instead for great Ukrainian doom.

If you want to listen to them anyway