Across Tundras - Western Sky Ride

This is a album review request, a friend of mine brought this around my house a while back and said here "review this piece of crap". Obviously he wasn't too happy about forking out his hard earned cash on the CD but he has been bugging me for a long time to review this album so he it goes. "Across Tundras" once proudly advertised themselves as a mix of Neurosis, Black Sabbath and Neil Young and they weren't joking. What they do for the most part is take Neurosis, mix that up with Sabbath style riffing and throw in some country folk influence so they might be one of the only country - doom bands in the world. Sometimes it works but a lot of the time, it doesn't. Western Sky Ride is nearly 70 minutes in length so there is plenty of opportunity to hit the skip button and i do find myself doing that a lot with this CD. For example the The disc's opener "Carrion Crow" has some alright vintage rock riffs before in the middle of the song they engaged in some pretty cool metallic riffing but it is all ruined by would you believe whistling ? What would posses a band to take this route is a mystery as the track takes a dramatic detour for the worse possible direction. "Follow Me to the San Luis" and "Two Black Clouds" are both very influenced folk tracks, the latter has guitar twang over noisy ambiance but both tracks left me thinking about that skip button. "Song of the Sullen Plains" has a thicker guitar sound and some much stronger vocals making it a standout track on the album.

"Low the Daystar Hangs" mixes a big riff with country licks but doesn't seem to get into tune with either. "Thunderclap Stomp" is the most rocking piece on the album, there is some Sabbath style riffing mixed in with southern rock lead guitar breaks but this time it works for the most part. "Badlands Blues (Dyin’ Days)" is an 8 minute epic that is heavy, fuzzy in parts and very jammy for most of the song. "Run with the Wolves" is just mediocrity to the extreme and "Two Black Clouds" makes the fatal mistake of adding some electronic sounds that simply don't work for the song. The final track on the album is "Gallows Pole" bringing the album back to the way it started which is a type of countrified Sabbath style post - rock. As you might have gathered i was not impressed at all with their concept of blending styles like these and he disc's vocal performance leaves a bit to be desired to say the least. Much of the vocal work just seems to be thrown in to fill out the song, most of it is a mix of tired moaning and background shouting. The sprawling compositions do have a original flavor about them so i will give them points for that but most of the musical ideas seem more like a afterthought more than well thought out songwriting. I must also point out, i know very little about the band and have only ever heard this album from them. Since doing this review, i did check out some other reviews for this album and discovered some people like it or even loved the album. Well that leaves me baffled but what the hell do i know. 5/10

www.myspace.com/acrosstundras