Peter Holslin subsists entirely on decaf and Halloween candy.
One of these days somebody needs to put together a Venn diagram outlining the similarities between doom metal and psychedelic soul. From a superficial standpoint these two genres seem completely different, but there’s a lot more overlap than you might expect. They both have roots in the blues. They both have transcendent designs. They’re both anchored by deep grooves, and they both have nasty tendencies. And above all, they both appeal to music listeners predisposed to the sweet leaf.
The parallels between doom and soul were obvious right from the moment those chapel bells first chimed on “Black Sabbath.” Have you ever heard Bill Ward play drums? That dude is as pocket as the devil is red. The cross-pollination continued in later years, most notably with the 1975 album Africa by Zambian psych band Amanaz—see their song “History of Man” for a most devious warlock’s brew of shakers and fuzz guitar. Now, in 2014, with categorical boundaries collapsing left and right and the world getting closer to doomsday with each new headline, it’s Daptone Records’ Afro-soul champions the Budos Band who wield the power of apocalyptic funk.
Burnt Offering, their new album, gets to the metal signifiers right away with the cover art—a drawing of a spooky, scepter-wielding wizard. When I picked the CD up at a record store, a promotional sticker on the packaging bore a ringing endorsement (“completely dialed in”; “totally infectious”) from Dave Lombardo, the drummer for thrash-metal pioneers Slayer. I popped the disc into my automobile radio and immediately felt a shiver of terror and ecstasy shoot down my spine. Opener “Into the Fog” unfurls with a spectral drone only to set alight with a battery of horns so diabolical that you’d swear they were a 1,000-man ghost army overtaking Hamburger Hill.
Of course, this album leans much more towards the soul on the soul/metal spectrum. You won’t be hearing any gargantuan Sunn O))) chords or Electric Wizard psycho screams on Burnt Offering. Still, the gnarled guitar of “Aphasia” is certain to stir the passions of any rocker, and there’s plenty of evil to be found in the title track, a smoldering jam that runs through a whirling organ solo and agonized baritone sax wail before culminating in a drum solo outro that splits the difference between the “Amen” break and Sabbath’s “Rat Salad.”
For all of the smoldering breakdowns and scorched solos, though, it’s the horns that truly illuminate the Budos Band’s crepuscular fog. Andrew Greene’s trumpet riff in “The Sticks” is dancefloor-ready triumphant, and saxophonist Jared Tankel tears through a solo with murderous poise on “Tomahawk.” I don’t know how these guys managed to give their horns the resilience of Valyrian steel, but in the haunted forest where doom and soul collide, they make the Budos Band one of the most fearsome pack of evil spirits around.
