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Released on April 7, 2015 via Grimoire Records (CD) / Australopithecus Records (LP)
Annandale-based bards of bollock-shrivelling doom Foehammer‘s self-titled EP is an absolute blinder – it’s a bloody sweet cake of an album, like a giant pudding of sound, which you really look forward to tucking into with a big spoon on a quiet afternoon. If you wanted to be a bit wanky about it you could call it “funereal sludge” because Foehammer throw in a couple of little distractions from the standard, route one doom thing, like messing about with guitar effects and time changes (from really slow to, yes, somehow even slower), which mixes things up a bit.
The third of these three tracks, ‘Jotnar’, is undoubtedly my favourite – not only for the Lord of the Rings reference, but because it’s just a bit mad and, I suspect, actually quite difficult to play. I know that sounds like a stupid reason to like the song, but, as the saying that I’ve just invented goes, the only thing harder than playing very, very fast is playing very, very slow, and with such strange tempo changes and no obvious time-keeping ‘Jotnar’ comes across as more avant-doom than anything else which is A Good Thing.
It starts out very quietly, then grows and swells and blows up growing more and more, pounding, still slow but somehow growing in intensity, lashing out slowly but violently at the listener like a dying whale. The vocals add a lot to this weight – it’s a breathy, subsonic growl that is both violent and intimate, alienating for non-fans while, for me at least, I found it quite welcoming, like being introduced to the world of Foehammer. It doesn’t dominate the music like a shriek would but it still conveys power.
I think if you start a doom band, in your mind, you imagine a band like Foehammer. I think a lot of modern doom sounds a bit weak, like they’re aiming for the deliberatly retro early St. Vitus sound, but the sheer heft of Foehammer distinguishes them. From the evidence of this EP they’re also quite experimentally minded, taking influence from Khanate as much as Electric Wizard. Combine that with allusions to epic myth (the second track is called ‘Stormcrow’, another Lord of the Rings reference) and a willingness to throw in the occasional woozy blues solo (also ‘Stormcrow’) and you’ll find that there’s definitely depth and fun to be found here – it doesn’t sound like a typical first EP, let’s put it that way.
Take ‘Final Grail’, for instance – it’s certainly very doomy, and that riff is huge, but whose decision was it to throw in the lovely, floral acoustic passage in the midst of the sheer tonnage of distortion? It’s a nice choice, and a refreshing cleanse to the ear pallette before the onslaught starts anew, but not the sort of choice you’d expect a new band to make. Their album is going to be huge and, if they keep up the Tolkein references, they’re going to have to come play the UK at some point. It’d be rude not to.
