OGRE - Plague Of The Planet
December 4, 2009, 15 years ago
(Shadow Kingdom)
This Maine-based band (a sentence I don't find myself typing too often) obviously aren't afraid of the big ideas: this disc is one 37-minute song. And while that brings to mind sprawling (and boring) post-metal soundscapes, forget that: this is multi-million-part trad/prog/doom metal. It's broken up into sections with awesome names like 'Queen Of Gasoline' and 'Colonizer Rex' and 'Battle At Doom Capital',' all of which is interesting, I guess, but here's what counts: the grooves are huge like Kyuss with raw production, the vocals soar like the best in Sabbath's back catalogue and the riffs are fucking massive. But there's also heaps of originality. Like the first section, 'Requiem', which takes the best of trashy L.A. street rock and combines it with D.C. doom, like Bang Tango catfighting St. Vitus while the members of Pentagram watch from the side, too beaten and boozed to even know what the fuck's going on. Battle at doom capital indeed.
