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Brainoil: Death of this dry season
05/10/11 || gk
Brainoil released their debut album back in 2003 and over time its become something of a forgotten classic in the sludge scene and simply seems to be unknown or ignored for the most part. Well, after 8 years of silence the band is back with “Death of this Dry Season” and I am thankful.
Right from album opener and title song, “Death of this Dry Season” Brainoil announce that they are back and stronger than ever. The song starts with a thick sludgy groove before settling down into a mid-paced stomp and ending with a wonderfully engaging jam feel. With 7 songs in just about 25 minutes, “Death of this Dry Season” takes a few sludge metal cliches and throws them out the window. The songs are energetic, vary in tempo, catchy and above all, memorable. “Gravity is a Relic” reminds me of classic Black Sabbath dragged kicking and screaming into a swamp and smothered in grime while “Opaque Reflections” is mid paced sludge before exploding into punk thrash rage. “Feet Cling to the Rotting Soil” is like a death metal tinged Soilent Green in a bare knuckle brawl with punk rock and is another great song. The album closes with the superb “The Beauty of Death” which is just a masterclass in sludge metal songwriting.
What makes “Death of this Dry Season” such a rewarding listen is the quality of songwriting. The band takes doom, death metal, punk and hardcore and fuses it into one big mass of sludgy goodness. Guitarist Nate Smith specializes in riffs that are heavy as fuck but are also memorable right through whether playing an upbeat thrashy riff or slowing things down to a crawl while the rhythm section is solid and provides a tight foundation for these songs without doing anything spectacular and the vocals are mixed perfectly, not being as upfront as to overpower the riffs and not buried beneath the sludge either.
Brainoil have an absolute winner here. There’s nothing wrong with this album apart from the fact that it’s only 25 minutes long and that it took them 8 long years to follow up their equally brilliant debut album. This is the most engaging and convincing sludge album I’ve heard all year. The songwriting is impeccable and at the end of the day, even the short running time works in the bands favour as the album closes with me wanting more. Hopefully it won’t take this Oakland trio another 8 years to release their next album. “Death of this Dry Season” is essential for fans of the genre and has enough meat to appeal to most fans of extreme metal.
- Information
- Released: 2011
- Label: 20 Buck Spin
- Website: www.brainoil.com
- Band
- Greg Wilkinson: bass, vocals
- Nathan Smith: guitars, vocals
- Ira Harris: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Death of this Dry Season
- 02. Gravity is a Relic
- 03. Opaque Reflections
- 04. Feet Cling to Rotting Soil
- 05. Bury the Pages of Existence
- 06. Crimson Shadows
- 07. The Beauty of Death
