Dark Buddha Rising are a space doom band from Finland, a country which seems to be a hot bed of boundary pushing underground musicians. They have made a small name for themselves, typified by a performance at Roadburn Festival but still relatively unknown and could possibly be described as an even more underground version of Ufomammut. Anyway, they have unleashed their fourth album entitled Dakhmandal (I have no idea what that means, not even Google translate could tell me) which contains 6 tracks entitled D, K, H, M, N, L and comes in at a whopping 80 minutes long. So just to warn you it’s a long and dark experience created by a bunch of chaps who clearly enjoy the odd bong.
‘D’ kicks us off, it’s slow, droney and does not go anywhere. It is 10 minutes of simple bass line, which most sane people would absolutely hate and simply describe it as nonsense. However, for doomsters such as myself, it’s a dramatic little opener and scintillating taster of what’s to come. ‘K’ then springs into life with the entire band in full flow pumping out a doom riff with just the right amount of crunch, with chanting vocals over the top which sounds like a pissed off wizard on a mountain who’s trying to give some goblins the directions to the edge of the earth. It speeds up, contains nice lead guitar and just as you really start flying it slows down. A bit of spot on doom delivered with a trippy edge, class. Towards the end some freak turns up and starts going on some weird, incomprehensible black metal rant which descends into a cosmic carnage when the riff starts flying again. It scared the living shit out of me.
Dakhmandal is not just about firing mind melting doom at us, there are long patches of ambience and experimentation before we’re smashed in the skull again. At points they manage to get into psychedelic doom hyper mega overdrive and you get teleported to a chaotic world full of volcanoes and freaky little creatures that live in caves. It sounds like the perfect hybrid of fellow Finnish rockers Circle and Hebosagil. However, I’m not sure there’s quite enough substance here to keep you fully engaged for the full 80 minutes, which let’s be honest is an absolute beast of a task. If this album was maybe cut down to 60 minutes, there would be potential for it to be labelled a classic but everything just goes on for that bit too long. There are points where it can lose focus sadly. Don’t get me wrong, there are some moments of brilliance but are they as good as Ufomammut? No. Whilst Dakhamandal isn’t the complete polished package, I would fully recommend this to anyone who enjoys doom, sludge, stoner etc. Listening to it is like watching an excellent horror movie that’s being broadcast on the tele, it’s dark, scary and engrossing but there’re ad breaks.
