Domo – Domo (2010 – 2011) - # Second Opinion

Domo is a Spanish psychedelic rock band I like a lot and with which I am in contact (I always hope to see them live at my latitudes …).

The band is already known to Doommantia. Many months ago, at the beginning of the year, Domo guys had sent in their self-released début album, Domo (2010) to the Doommantia writing team, and a review had been written by “colleague” Sandrijn.

In order to contribute in spreading the news about Domo, I had written a review of their album for Sludgeswamp.

Recently drummer Paco sent me a few updates about Domo so I thought I would share them with you, together with my own review.

Domo have been having quite a busy life gig-wise in the last year, as one can guess by lurking in their Myspace or Facebook pages. However the truly outstanding news is that on July 1st 2011 Domo’s debut album has been officially released by the Spanish label Radix Records, specialized in various underground genres (from psych acid rock to doom, sludge, hardcore, post-rock, etc.).

The encouraging news for this emerging band lead me to write something about Domo for Doomantia as well. So, as I had different ideas about Domo’s debut release, here is my “second opinion”, partly adapted from what I had written for Sludgeswamp.


Spain is a great land with a bursting underground music scene bringing us a lot of different types of tunes. I often look at Spain for doses of furious sludgy death metal and/or highly blasphemous black/death/grindcore storms, and I enormously appreciate the great heavy doom slabs coming from that part of Europe. But Spain, as South America, is able to unearth some cool psychedelic tunes that probably reflect the sense of getting lost in the wastelands and in the big empty open spaces. Spain is part of the over-crowded Europe but it is a big country with many areas where you can enjoy the pleasure of being lonesome. Moreover the Sahara desert is not that far and the southern winds carry the desert sands up to the European shores ...

Domo is a trio from those shores, from the southern, coastal town of Alicante: Sam on guitar, Paco on drums and percussions and Oscar on bass and vocals.

Together with cool to monster bands such as Arenna, Toundra,Viaje a 800 and El Paramo, Domo is contributing in enlivening the Spanish psychedelic-desert rock scene. Actually if you take psychedelic-desert rock and add the sludge-doom part of the scene, you’ve got a truly magmatic underground boiling in that part of Europe. The Spanish psychedelic scene is steadily and impressively growing and has connections with the South American underground psych bands (e.g., with Los Natas).

Band Domo is quite young as the trio started only during 2010. However the band members played in the stoner rock band Ride. Declared, obvious and mandatory sources of inspiration for their music are the big names of psychedelia and prog rock of the 70's, Hendrix, Cream, Hawkwind, May Blitz, Krautrock bands, the monsters of modern desert and stoner rock as well as Pentagram and Black Sabbath.

While listening to Domo's tracks you can surely get the feeling of all those influences, although the Sabbathian doom precursors are not so overwhelming. But apart from the fathers of the British psychedelia, it is highly probable that these guys were influenced also by bands of the local, outstanding heavy prog-psych scene during the 60-70's. Some names? Well, for example Tapiman (all of those who browsed around in mighty Orexis of Death may remember the funny pink skull and those great tunes) as well as the impressive Pan & Regaliz stuff, that I happened to discover not long ago thanks to the goldmine Phrock blog.


In the Domo’s debut album tracks vary from rather short to very long, even up to 24 minutes in the last track Samsara. This extended track includes a tricky long-span of silence separating two very cool, pure psych-desert rock instrumental parts which possess a bit more rawness relative to the rest of the tracks.

Domo's style is mostly instrumental although some minor vocals are used in a few occasions. Psychedelic rock is particularly fit for letting instruments, especially guitars, speak more than voices, however here the vocal additions sound cool. When vocal insertions are present, they either pleasantly contribute to some desert rock parts with brief but energetic chanting or else they are introduced as distant echo-like choirs that help in increasing the trippy aura of the sound or a sense of alienation.

So the tracks vary from space psychedelia with balanced doses of experimentation, let's say, à-la-Hawkwind or à-la-Earthless, to bluesy jams recalling Hendrix to straight Kyussian desert rock, sometimes quite heavy rock. Cool ...

I particularly like the complex, spacey to sometimes almost jazzy guitar jams knitted together and over the rhythmic base. Also percussions get some interesting solo "moments" and I found this quite unusual, but very nice.

I must say that the drummer definitely deserves some exposure because I think he did great.

In the long fifth track the melody a bit different from the other tracks. It starts in a simple way and is lead by reverberating guitar chord vibrating over some fast, march-like drumming in the background. The guitar sound develops a melodic line recalling some typical Spanish sounds.

The very long track Samsara, the one with the silent interval in-between, has probably got the highest level of rawness in Domo’s sound, and, I must say, I like it a lot when these guys get heavy and a bit dirty!

So it is nice to see that labels support the emerging bands. Domo album is a stellar debut album, full of great tunes, big vibes, great spacey, dreamy, trippy atmospheres and it shows the great musicianship and the high potential of these Spanish rockeros. 9/10


Review by Marilena Moroni

Domo @ Myspace
Domo @ Facebook
Radix Records