Flower Of Disease

Album review

With Flowers of Disease, Goatsnake delivers its trademark slick, thick, and smooth guitar tones à la Kyuss meets Black Sabbath, way-low dropped tunings, heavy drumming, solid production values, and some pretty weird instrument appearances. These guys have been around the proverbial doom metal block, and it shows. Pete Stahl gives a vocal performance that is unique, melodic and dynamic in range, lending a classic doom sound that's an increasingly untypical and refreshing vocal approach in today's black-, death-, and grindcore-influenced doom metal scene. The slow- to mid-paced grooves are all the Sabbath-inspired heaviness you could hope for, but much of the album comes off like a wasted summer evening from your best memories. "Easy Greasy" has Stahl singing "Fellout and tore up/With my friends and their freaks/We laugh and lie so high it's sweet." Not only that, but the mouth harp thing, along with the slow, heavy groove, gives off this "down by the river, takin' it easy" feeling. This is a doom record though, and aside from the fact that there's plenty of mellow "let it go" attitude here, the title track is the most morose. "Flower of Disease" conjures suicidal thoughts with the lyrics "I touch these walls of this place I know/Death is standing right outside the door/I smile inside to hide the cries/The pain just loves to multiply." An enjoyable listen, this album is a perfect marriage of modern production techniques, excellent riffing, melodic classic doom, and grooving ambience.

© Paul Kott /TiVo