Album: Haze (2013)
Genre: Psychedelic Rock (Heavy/Stoner) / Switzerland
Like the 80's onwards never happened Black Willows cast aside all assertions of contemporary music to delve deep into a Sabbath past with Haze, one of the finer stoner rock albums you'll hear this year. Gather up your flares, grow your hair long again and light up a doobie for a trip on the dark side of life. Crunchy riffs are the order of the day on an album which, whilst a tad overlong, is very slim on filler. Doomladen hooks mix with an intelligent prog sense creating a slow dance of death which crawls insidiously into your ears. 'Neptune' highlights this as it crawls along with drifting vocals evoking those lost, stoned moments only to segue in 'Haiku' giving some semblance of concept as all great albums should have. As mentioned before, this is intelligent but still dumb enough to be fun which is a fine line to tread in this genre. Black Willows are not afraid to dirge it either as 'Black Magic' demonstrates. It's not all perfect by a long shot, 'Apache' in particular feeling like filler but Haze is a sterling effort in bringing something new to the genre. For every riff there is an interesting bridge which changes tempo for a while only to return with a crushing riff. 'Velvet Diamond' covers all bases as a brooding masterpiece coloured with the best Sabbath riff never written. 'Dead Mantra' serves as a suitably epic finish with all 14 minutes of it covering all ground previously played. It's a blinding finish to what is a really good album and one that deserves to have pride of place alongside the classics of the genre. Review by "Martyn Coppack" (http://echoesanddust.com).
RATING: 8 / 10
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Genre: Psychedelic Rock (Heavy/Stoner) / Switzerland
Like the 80's onwards never happened Black Willows cast aside all assertions of contemporary music to delve deep into a Sabbath past with Haze, one of the finer stoner rock albums you'll hear this year. Gather up your flares, grow your hair long again and light up a doobie for a trip on the dark side of life. Crunchy riffs are the order of the day on an album which, whilst a tad overlong, is very slim on filler. Doomladen hooks mix with an intelligent prog sense creating a slow dance of death which crawls insidiously into your ears. 'Neptune' highlights this as it crawls along with drifting vocals evoking those lost, stoned moments only to segue in 'Haiku' giving some semblance of concept as all great albums should have. As mentioned before, this is intelligent but still dumb enough to be fun which is a fine line to tread in this genre. Black Willows are not afraid to dirge it either as 'Black Magic' demonstrates. It's not all perfect by a long shot, 'Apache' in particular feeling like filler but Haze is a sterling effort in bringing something new to the genre. For every riff there is an interesting bridge which changes tempo for a while only to return with a crushing riff. 'Velvet Diamond' covers all bases as a brooding masterpiece coloured with the best Sabbath riff never written. 'Dead Mantra' serves as a suitably epic finish with all 14 minutes of it covering all ground previously played. It's a blinding finish to what is a really good album and one that deserves to have pride of place alongside the classics of the genre. Review by "Martyn Coppack" (http://echoesanddust.com).
RATING: 8 / 10
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