The Cult Of Dom Keller – The Second Bardo
You’re doing something right when your debut sells out in a month and the first pressing of your second does the same on pre-orders alone. The much-needed repress of that sophomore LP, The Second Bardo, touches down later this month and Midlands heavy-psyche scorchers The Cult Of Dom Keller will be blowing fuses afresh on their continuing mission to boldly vaporise with hypnotic distortion when it does.
Power psyche like this either relies on speeding fury or raw noise for its power. The Second Bardo largely mines the latter, only really creeping out of mid-tempo for the aggressive title-track, which despite starting life with one of those deliciously reverbed, spaced-out scales so favoured by Psychic Ills, later develops into a caught-in-the-face-of-Armageddon kraut-psyche blaster. “Godshaker” on the other hand compensates for what it lacks in pace with juggernaut chug. With enough low-end to carve out your chest, yet the ability to fry the synapses of Heaven itself, the guitars are like Hendrix on Mogadon, the vocals, slathered in distant doom and reverb, like Jim Morrison’s ghost trapped down a well.
Instrumental bong-athon “The Snake Keeps Changing” locks you in with deep feedback, a mid-mix solo transfixing your cortex and snapping you back into, urgh, the real world when it eventually lets go. Vintage synth-organ crowds to drone out the shoegazing “Ghost Bones” and its segues to dimension-renting space-rock. Ponderous guitar work manages to snake its way out the gloom on “Plague Of All”, which lurches and lollops from cosmic exploration to dark-tunnelled zoning during its 8 head-swimming minutes. There’s an almost surfy sway in between intense passages of pedal swarm on “Heavy & Dead” and the epic “Into The Sky Volcano – Beyond Burning Skies” convulses in slow motion, back-masked Eastern vibes miraging away seductively in the heavy soup.
The Cult Of Dom Keller have the draw of a black hole and The Second Bardo is their event horizon. Don’t sleep on that second pressing. It won’t be around long.
Best tracks: “The Second Bardo” and “Godshaker”
~As per the original pressing, the repress of The Second Bardo will be presented in a reverse-board sleeve with insert and pressed on oxblood/bottle green bi-colour swirl and will be out June 23rd 2014 on Cardinal Fuzz (original release March 3rd 2014).~