Salem's Pot

...Lurar Ut Dig På Prärien

Written by: BV on 07/09/2014 16:30:31

The Swedish psychedelic doom trio Salem’s Pot released their debut album, ”…Lurar Ut Dig På Prärien” back in April and, to be perfectly honest, I had casually neglected the album until very recently due to a growing amount of trivial concerns regarding daily life and what not. However, having finally given myself an ample amount of listening time for this album, I can say that at the very first glance this band seems to be yet another band following the trend of run-of-the-mill Sabbath-worship – or rather Electric Wizard worship, seeing as the album collects a mere three tracks to span the playing time of close to 35 minutes. Obviously, this entails a fair amount of druggy psychedelic-doom. The question that remains, however, is if there’s more to the band than mere worshipping.

Opening track “Creep Purple” certainly hints at a songwriting structure that is increasingly familiar within the genre, as the sluggish guitars creep their way forward in the mix in the typically slow, down-tuned fashion. As the anxiety inducing vocals eventually rear their head with lyrics like; ”Things are getting pretty strange / I really need to get out / A thousand voices in the back of my head / Trying to tell me what it's all about, the dominant themes of the track are increasingly easy to point out. Anxiety and paranoia seem to be the themes in abundance and the surprisingly evolving soundscape contributes a fair part to this mixture of confusion, fear and, well, haziness. What strikes me, however, is that even though the track shifts tempo and feel quite a few times throughout the 13 minute runtime, I still feel like the progression is a bit random – perhaps intentionally to add to the lyrical themes, but in any sense it does muddy up the sonic experience and subsequently threw me off, as a listener, more than a few times before I eventually got the hang of how the track was structured.

To call the music derivative would be an understatement, but it’s not really a core issue as this genre, as well as many of those I usually favor, rely heavily on deriving a fair share of ideas from their influences, only to distill them into a sound that is still highly unique or, at the very least, personal. This, however, seems to be my core issue with Salem’s Pot, as this album has all the proper ingredients going for it – yet somehow they have yet to distill them into something that is their own, something that I, and others, can tell apart from the vast sea of likeminded bands. “Dr. Death” is, quite possibly, the closest Salem’s Pot can come to a distinctive sound as of this moment, but with its immense riffing and strangely hazy, yet highly charismatic groove it has a potential which Salem’s Pot can build on – something that could make them as discernible as Electric Wizard, Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats, Acid King or any other band out there that has created an identity on the tried and true formulas of psychedelic doom. It’s a decent first try, but I think Salem’s Pot can do better – and I hope they will.

6

Download: Dr. Death
For The Fans Of: Electric Wizard, Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats, Monolord
Listen: Facebook

Release date 29.04.2014
Easyrider Records


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