D(((O)))(((O)))M……. ‘Nuff Said from Scotland

So a couple of mates in Scotland who played World of Warcraft when they discovered they have similar tastes in music and now have been doing albums for some time now and their seventh release, (((WHITE NOISE))) shows them not slowing down in the slightest. The Prog marquee facets a great many styles under its massive heading and these two have comfortably and not numbly found their place in the little corner of Technical-Doom-Scot-Post-Rock-Prog-Electronica-Industrial-Something-or-Other department. From Glasgow, Scotland comes Boobs of DOOM. Known as Dr. Sadsack MacDoom(on the left) and Thumper(right) and their band name came about after they weren’t allowed to use it as they aligned forces on World of Warcraft due to language restrictions. So through a little bit of chit-chat they found out they lived close together and decided that they can expand their own Warcraft on the world through music. Why not eh?

Scotland; a country that gained its sovereignty through wars and loads of bloodshed and in 1320 in what has been held as the world’s first documented declaration of independence, the Declaration of  Arbroath and won the support of the current Pope at the time, leading to the legal recognition of Scottish sovereignty by their rivals, The English. Also from Scotland: Haggis (Which I absolutely LOVE), Big Country, the birth place of Golf, Robert the Bruce, Billy Connolly, Hadrian’s Wall, Nazareth, Violent Fitba fans, Mogwai(the band), Sean Connery and of course the Loch Ness Monster to name but a mere few. So add to that the music of Boobs of Doom and we’re away, WHOOSH! ….And now for something completely different….

Seven tracks for the seventh album, ha ha ha, sounds more like a campy 50’s movie spin off but they went ahead and did it anyways. We open up the record to track one; Nihilism- Thanks for Nothing… with what sounds like the flashbacks of an LSD trip circling through your head the next morning or a week later then we’re graced with the beginnings of a motor starting up but not quite making it as the build up before the storm of drum patterns that march like stormtroopers on parade followed by the discordant sounds of feedback and guitar strikes. An ominous cloud of images are conjured up here in this soundtrack style piece for the ages of intense horror and  D(((O)))(((O)))M. Droning notes in the background keep your nerves trembling and nowhere near at bay as it draws upon your deep psychological levels to become unrest. The classic and brilliant usage of effects are evident and laid out with architectural precision here as the music plays out in what is a very Post Rock song in the styling of Red Sparowes where it causes your stomach muscles to tense up waiting for something awful to happen in the next scene. A profound and powerful opening track to the record. Know Yr Place, Stupit Hyoomaan! follows up next with a head first dive in to the band’s sound in this 15:34minute epic track. The vibration of your speakers commence the first noises of the creation of sound in this one. What sounds like distant mechanical whales calling you from the depths permeates your room as they draw closer and closer to you as acoustic guitar makes its way through the electrical haze and begins to calm the scene to smoother waters. Electric guitar pulls force their way through and sing out their repeated refrain to us as if calling for help from the distant shores of an island far off. The bass kicks in around the 4:15minute mark to remind us that all is not calm and that things are beginning to change as the track builds up a static frenzy and starts to unleash its waves upon us. Flashes if lightning are imaged with the striking sounds of what one would expect it sound like as the internal organs of the song bounce and begin to boil as the track takes us on a driving beat that tells us its time to go. Where? Doesn’t matter but the storm is coming and one must leave now.At 7:25minutes the track shifts gears and changes up the tempo/timbre causing a disruption in the flow of things on us and has us floating in purgatory with voices coming through like in an empty train station. A long lost soundtrack from an old b/w film develops in your mind as the song winds down to a fuzzy overtone in your head. Still floating in purgatory we are left to be weightless and relatively motionless as we feel the sounds from our speakers splash up against our bodies when out of nowhere the track picks up again and we begin to move once more. The mechanical and industrial presence of sounds in the song are a force to be reckoned with only by those who dare to attempt to climb their mountains and become the ruler to which will not happen here. Another powerful track that stands out as a dark and foreboding tapestry of sound.

Next up, Liquid Dinosaurs, a delightful title making you think of some childhood soup product you ate while watching the Flintstones at noon as you ran home from school and out of breath gorged yourself on bowls of but NO! Not here! The pounding of electronic footsteps takes command of centre stage and the evolution race is on with this one as we gather up images of giants roaming the earth. The celestial egg has cracked and we are graced with monsters of musical form here. Synth drops that are gargantuan and guitar notes that blast through a synth wah envelope filter to make for an even deeper thud throughout the song. The backing guitar track creates a waves of uncertainty as these monsters stagger and tromp the ground beneath them. A murky overcast remains present in this track as it shatters your speakers forthwith leaving behind a field of debris that has you running for the hills but sneaking back to your room to play it again at max volume to disturb your neighbours. Another track of enormous strength and power resulting in a chaos of sound thus far. 00101110 01100100 01000001 01100101 01100100 00100000 01010011 01001001 00100000 01101110 01001111 01100111 01000101 -error404- has to be THE longest title that I have ever seen in a song and at 9:26minutes it will tell us why. With beautiful Scottish rain starting us off and the sounds of someone hitting a small Cajon drum we are served up a fluctuation of synth sounds that scrape across the watery pavement as we are taken across the gravelly roads down the way of the foothills. The droning notes are hypnotic as we are collectively lead astray and through the streets as if on someone else’s parade. To what makes me think of a wind up carnival box run through a distortion pedal it plays out actually a nice little melody when you really sit and listen to it. The mechanical temple bell tolling sounds that call you to the mountain top or the grand sound of a giant doorbell at some crusty old palace rings out loud and clear in its vibratory tones. To me this is the soundtrack song to George Square in Glasgow, if you’ve ever been there you’d understand. Perhaps the equivalent of Hell’s Kitchen in New York or Dundas and Parliament streets (Cabbagetown) in Toronto, an abstract clock made of old car parts, scraps of metal and cigarette butts that becomes the timepiece for the area and this song generates the mood both up and down, in and out as the 24hrs in a day pass by. Dream of She shifts the mood to a more psychedelic start off and the feeling of being trapped in a giant washing machine drum. The snappy drum track clasps the sides for you to crawl out and in to the warbly sound of the melody. A surrealistic dreamscape absolutely is the premise here as the song fills your room with very Twilight Zone imaginative thoughts and carries you all over the grid of the dream in which we are taken on. The short sarcastic guitar passages are ringing in and out of your ears as the synths throw wave upon wave of electric vibes down your body in what leads to a very 70’s blanket of fun. The various sections of the song transform it in to a collection of different dreams and each section allows us to breathe in different facets of who “She” is. The drum patterns remains consistent throughout keeping us on the journey steadfast and true for the most part with the occasional break as the synths wash our minds only to fill them up again with a multi-coloured bucket of goo filled guitar riffs as we are becomming one with “She” and the “Dream” and absorbed in to the convoluted wired maze that is the Dream. The last section takes us in to overdrive and sends us careening down the stars as we no longer have control (did we ever?) and the controls have been set for not the heart of the sun but some far off distant place you have no idea where but you’re going and that’s that.

Creepy Old Tools We Found Under the Floorboards, don’t let the title fool you, this epic piece of spatial experimentation is brilliantly laid out. George Lucas would have salivated buckets for this track to have been in his first film, THX1138 because the sterile and cold, calculus feel to it sends shivers down your spine. The droning sense of the track draws you in and the beat is fresh and so is the produce section at the local grocer’s but here we’re keeping it mechanically doped up for the masses. A funky rhythm track that has your head bobbing slightly as the synths sing out over a catchy drum track and you almost, no you have no other choice but to get up and move your groove to this one as the colours swirl around your body, in and out of your ears and down to your feet to keep them shuffling. Certainly room for this in your highway iPod mix because this is the stuff that space rock is made of, served up their style with a side order of chips. Guitars run through a series of modulators and envelope filters creating a variety of sounds over the drum beats that are instantly connected to your feet and head with the synths sending us waves of love to add flare and infected spice to the mix. Great track and one that was played out about half a dozen times before I moved on to our final track on the album, The Great Northern Psychedelic Cull. A gentle start of drumming with some soft cymbal ring outs as we’re lead down the way of the percussive commencement as we hear the synths roll in with their dreamscape tones and a passive guitar track to accompany it nicely. It we attach the title to the song we gather up images of the procession of parishioners in a drug induced haze of walking barefoot along the shorelines to their great leader and sitting around the fire as they are offered their sacrament to begin their ritualistic body rolling becomming one with the world as they begin to dissolve in to the air and float upwards and drift through the universe in to the stars and nebula surrounding the planets. The guitar track takes us through the galaxies that bind and surround the others as the enlightened visitors smile as they pass by. Deep and dark tones from the synths lay the foundations for more to join and guitar notes the strike periodically to signal the return as heavy chords drop down to expand the universe. The drums keep the steady beat as they walk through the stars and bend the pinholes in the curtain of night. Poetic as it is post rock the song keeps the PROGressive elements flowing throughout with the menagerie of sounds combined in this track. The climactic finale to the song has the galaxies exploding and imploding as we are sucked in to its vortex and taken away yet again to places, PLACES we just don’t know as yet. The last seconds of the song we get a blast of a voice saying that it’s because we’re Scottish isn’t it? Rubbish?  NO WAY!

Boobs of D(((O)))(((O)))M have clearly left their mark on the world and me. This album is brilliant in its delivery of Post/Industrial/Prog/Doom Rock, their rock! I love this album outright and for its statement of doing what they wanted to do, dug deep in to a facet of music that has been highly over looked by many and considered rubbish by others but when you really listen to it and hear all the things going on in each track it isn’t just noise, it’s pretty damn Progressive and has many of the ingredients and elements of Prog for sure. I can’t wait to have a jaunt in to their other albums and see what they have been doing there. Great band, great guys and great music, sorry – MYOOOOOSIK! Enjoy

 

P.S.

Don’t worry lads, I no tell ye to F’off and die in a fire now. We’re mates and I’d at least throw ye a wet chamois or somethin’ of the likes ye know, wouldnae be a jakey spastic on ye! LOL.

https://boobsofdoom.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/boobsofdoom/

https://boobsofdoom.wordpress.com/

 

~fin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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