Dopethrone return to the basics of heaviness.
Six years after their previous album, Vincent Houde (guitar/vocals), Vyk (bass) and Shawn (drums) announce the release of Broke Sabbath, their sixth album, on Totem Cat Records.
Vyk announced he was leaving the band after their last tour, marking his last album, and will be replaced by Myke on future shows.
We start with Life Kills You, a track where grease and dissonance quickly appear, sometimes even giving the impression of drowning the vocals in their waves of catchy brutality. The efficient repetitive rhythm easily knocks us out, but the track is short, as is Truckstop Warlock which takes an even more oppressive slowness to develop its suffocating saturation. A few sampled lyrics are integrated into the quieter moments, before the band segues into Abac, whose acronym rubs off on the track’s aggressiveness to make it a hymn to rage while remaining anchored in these haunting, abrasive patterns. It’s also worth noting the length of the track, which eventually fades out to the benefit of Shlaghammer which spreads its thick riffs while drawing on Old School influences bordering on Psychedelic Rock and the English Doom band from which the band takes its name, but the second half of the track is much darker and angrier. Rock Slock takes advantage of this to place some airy harmonics before adopting a more lively and disorganized approach, but also some livelier or slower moments before the final vocal sample, which reminds us of an 80s gore film by switching to Uniworse. The vocals continue for a while, then it’s the dark saturation that comes back to haunt us, striking regularly before Sultans of Sins takes over to plunge us into the depths of saturation and groove, incorporating some more hypnotic effects at times.
Dopethrone seemed to have disappeared, but the band is back in top form with this Broke Sabbath, shaped in fat and heaviness. The essence of Sludge and Doom meets thick saturation and ever darker vocal parts.
90/100