Flood
Native
7.4
Native worried me a bit at first; the record gets off to a slow start.
And of course, this is doom, so the record stays slow, at least in terms of tempo, but thankfully, after a few minutes of respectable-but-uninspiring drone, Native up-shifts into a trudging groove that takes this out of the Sunn and straight into the shadow of Electric Wizard. Nothing here is particularly outside-the-norm, but Flood does what Flood does well.
Native sports only four tracks, but yet it's still over forty minutes thanks to epic-length tracks that move along at roughly half the speed of snails. When Flood succeeds most, they do so within those Electric Wizard stoner-like grooves, higher quality bits that are thankfully more numerous and prominent than the less-interesting, ultra-slow moments. The eighteen-minute opening track "Aphelion" is microcosmic of the whole record, starting slow, grooving solid, stopping for a moment with nothing but a whole-note bass “riff” before some tasty harmonized guitar lines, and then back into that lumbering gait. The vocals are sporadic, an anguished bellow when they’re present. The guitar tone is vintage stoner, certainly more rock than metal and yet heavier than half the metal you’ll ever hear.
I usually like to provide some kind of biographical or anecdotal information concerning the bands and records I review, but Flood keeps a low profile, it seems. Their Myspace consists of a video I couldn’t get to work and some etchings of skeletons and (you guessed it) a flood, although that same site does provide first names for four band members (one of whom is credited only for “fog machine”). Their website is a blog that had only one entry, detailing an album release show a month or so back. So I know as much as you do about Flood, except that I’ve heard the record, and I can say I enjoyed it.
Lack of direct information notwithstanding, fans of all things slow and crushing and awesome will find this to be the first always, the second in sporadic moments, and the third in enough places to make Native more than worthwhile. With this one and solid releases from Snail and Black Pyramid, Meteor City is three for three lately.
