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Orange Goblin: The big black

24/09/09 || Habakuk

I’m not huge on stoner, but I do enjoy it quite a bit from time to time. I understand and dig the hypnotic, slow sound as a part of the genre, but the main problem for me is that bands tend to indulge themselves in it too fucken much. Life’s too short for 10-minute phaser guitar noodling, except maybe when you’re high. I’m not high, and now the stoner scene has to watch in awe as it becomes the victim of my frustrated rantings. We all know how much they depend on GD’s benevolence to survive, after all.

Undeniably though, the world needs more bands that talk about space travel combined with a drugged out stoner sound. You guessed it, Orange Goblin are one of these bands, and in terms of instrumentation, their sound is first and foremost heavily inspired by the likes of Kyuss – yet they do have a stronger, and highly appreciated, tendency to rock out with their goblin cocks out once in a while.
Upbeat songs like “Turbo effalunt”, “Scorpionica”, “Alcofuel” and “Quincy the pigboy” that have some juicy riffage to boot are muchly welcomed in breaking up the slow, thick, meandering groove that constitutes a considerable part of “The big black”. That’s not to say these parts aren’t enjoyable or don’t have good riffing, by the way, far from that, as Joe Horri and Pete O’Malley do a quite formidable job on their respective six-string friends. But riffing is something many stoner albums get right. What I expect from a great stoner album: Get the mix of slow and fast right. Otherwise, you’ll make me a pretty bored listener after about one spin, and we don’t want that, do we? Most certainly not. So, what about this one here?
“The big black” is close to a good mixture, but just a tiny little bit too far on the slow side of things for my tastes. The chilled-out parts are performed well, but suffer a bit from a lack of punch in the production. This is not a major issue for me, but it surely doesn’t help, y’know?

Another common problem I have with stoner bands are annoying-ass singers with high-pitched and fucken nerve-straining squealing. Fortunately though, Orange Goblin steer clear of such issues, with Ben Ward employing a slightly raspy, but clean type of singing that complements the music instead of infesting it with suckage.

With that out of the way, there are no bad tracks at all, so the whole thing can be listened to without twisted urges to hit the “skip”-button, whilst comfortably leaning back in your armchair. Sadly, I don’t have an armchair, and when I’m able to pick single songs on my computer, it always comes down to the same four fast ones named above. Still, we basically get a solid stoner album with a couple of shiny highlights? Sounds good enough for me – this is quite an enjoyable listen.

…

And did I mention I hate hidden tracks? At least the one they have on the title track is reasonably funny with some drunk dude on the phone. Once. Necessary? Doubtful. There goes half a point.

Information
Released: 2000
Label: Rise Above
Website: www.orange-goblin.com
Band
Ben Ward: vocals
Pete O’Malley: guitars
Joe Horri: guitars
Martyn Millard: bass
Chris Turner: drums

Tracklist
01. Scorpionica
02. Quincy the pigboy
03. Hot magic, red planet
04. Cozmo bozo
05. 298 kg
06. Turbo effalunt (elephant)
07. King of the hornets
08. You’ll never get to the moon in that
09. Alcofuel
10. The big black

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