Clagg - Lord Of The Deep

One of the draw-backs of getting CD's sent to you every week for reviews is sometimes a CD gets lost in the endless pile of CD's or simply gets forgotten about. One look at my CD collection and you can see how easily this could happen, this is the case of Clagg's third album "Lord Of The Deep" where too many CD's and too little time forced me to put this on hold for a while. I totally regret it now as this is a great slab of sonic Doom from a band that is one of Australia's heaviest bands ever. Its been two years since they released "Where Dead Gods Sleep" which was so heavy it was like they were searching for the ultimate brown note noise. That album was incredibly, oppressively thick and slow and this album might be a little faster overall but the heaviness is still there intact. The band has been plagued with a lot of line-up changes recently but its great to see they have lost nothing in terms of heaviness or sonic brutality.

The album starts with the 16 minute "Carrion" and in typical Clagg style it is in the vein of Iron Monkey, Grief etc. There is not much in terms of riffs but there is a oddly faster middle section to break things up a bit. With bands like this there is a tendency to get a little tedious and the last half of the track does just that. Its still all good but they might have been wise to shave a few minutes off the track but thankfully there is a great solo towards the end of the track which makes it worth the journey. The title track which is split into two parts called "They Dream Fire" and "At the Rising of the Storm" is more concise than the opener despite running over 15 minutes. "Buried" has a killer riff but its a real effort to sit through as once again, one killer riff in a such a long track makes it a demanding stretch.

"The Harvest" is different from the rest of the album because the sludge noise is replaced by traditional doom and the vocals take a un-expected twist. The raspy growls are replaced by some crooning which gives singer Scotty a chance to show he has some melody to his pipes as opposed to his usual hollering style. The final track "Devour the Sun" takes the band back to its usual sludge fest and once again things do tend to drag on a bit but it is saved by some scorching solo guitar work. Despite the fact that most of the songs do run over their desired running times, i still think this is a slight improvement over "Where Dead Gods Sleep" and therefore is a ideal way to start checking out this band if you haven't done so as yet. 8.5/10

Clagg @ Myspace.com