It's no secret that doom metal has exploded in popularity in recent years. It can clearly be seen on the national scale, and depending on your location, you might notice it locally as well. Living in Massachusetts, where the doom scene is thriving (Magic Circle's debut is making waves, and the doom world has responded well to past offerings from Elder and Black Pyramid), I often worry about becoming overexposed to the genre and getting sick of it - but then, I find another fantastic doom album and those fears go away.
Shinin' Shade hail from Parma, Italy, and their second full-length album Sat-Urn is one such album. Telling the story of a burial procession headed towards the desert of Wiriguta - which, if my research is correct, is a sacred site of the Wixarrica Huichol Indians in central Mexico - Sat-Urn is a dark, psychedelic adventure that will certainly please fans of Blood Ceremony, Jess and the Ancient Ones, and other occult-themed psychedelic bands. Shinin' Shade, however, are much more focused on big, heavy doom riffs than many of their contemporaries, putting them more in a category somewhere between Ancestors and Witch Mountain; not as keyboard-heavy or blatantly psychedelic as Ancestors, but less massive and crushing as Witch Mountain.
It is very, very easy to point out the influences on this album. The very first riff on album opener 'Our Time and Space' owes much to Sleep, Trouble, and Candlemass, and many of the heavy riffs play with the ratio of bluesy-heavy-stoner-doom vs. melodic-NWOBHM-doom. And then there are the proggier moments, which bear distinct resemblances to King Crimson, Pink Floyd, and Black Widow, with the really spacey moments bearing a slight krautrock tinge.
However, simply naming influences doesn't really do the style here justice. Despite bearing obvious similarities to many other bands, Sat-Urn is able to occupy a somewhat unique niche. The prog and psych influences might have been too much to call this a straight-up doom metal album - except that those proggy, psychedelic, spacey moments are just so dark that it reinforces the doomy nature of the music rather than projecting it into other musical territory. When you see psychedelia mixed with doom, it's typically the fuzzed-out bluesy style of Cream or Dead Meadow, as spacey psychedelic rock is typically flowy and lighter even when it's on the darker side. So when a band is able to take the spacier side of psychedelia and make it bleak and funereal - and then mix it with badass stoner doom riffs - it's bound to catch my interest.
And so I will be paying very close attention to Shinin' Shade's career. While they don't yet have a sound they can call completely their own, they've been able to combine their numerous influences in a way that I haven't heard done before, which puts them ahead of many of their peers. Sat-Urn should impress any doom fan enough to get them immediately on the Shinin' Shade bandwagon, as some very interesting things could be coming from them in future.
