SALOME - Terminal CD review

SALOME - Terminal CD
Profound Lore Records

I'll give you three reasons why I believe this one release will have alot of people salivating over it in 2010. It's on Profound Lore, it's sludge which is the new Indie Rock and it has a female singer. This is Katherine "Kat" Katz's other project aside from her work in AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED which is a band that no hipster in his superficial existing life would touch. Hell I'll be surprised if any of em touched their 2008 self titled debut. That fucker had four songs on it including the over twenty minute ass dragging "Onward Destroyer". I liked the other three cuts plus the songs from their two splits. SALOME remind me of a band I saw back in the 90s called CRISIS. They too had a female singer, Karyn Crisis, who also howled and grunted (which Kat does) but musically they were more on the crusty punk side of sludge metal. They also smelled of potrulli. SALOME fits into the gap between CRISIS and THORR'S HAMMER, who also had the incredible Runhild Gammelsaeter on vocals.

Signing on to Profound Lore Records is definitely a step up for SALOME since the label is no slouch and they command respect from the in the know crowd, like myself of course, but not you. As far as this new release goes it has a more accessible sound when compared to the band's previous stuff which had a real sinister atmosphere. The problems with accessibility is that you not only water down your sound but you also water down the reaction from "hanging onto every note astonishment' to "sounds good I'm going to the toilet". Terminal is longer than their debut as in slightly over a full hour's worth. There's seven cuts this time around but the longest one "An Accident of History" is a few seconds over seventeen minutes long. The band still commands the high ground by interweaving the doom laydened riffs with their drone adventures. The drums and guitar compliment each other so perfectly on Terminal. To a point it's too perfect since previously Rob Moore had a guitar crunch just as vicious as Kat's shrieks. Aaron Deal's drumming was more reckless but not sloppy.

Obviously it's Kat who commands the most whether it's her high pitch wails or low growls which creep out of her as she were possessed. Linda Blair could've taken lessons. Her growls are now as deep as Moores low end guitar tunings. He almost sounds like he's playing a six string bass and after a while it gets tiresome. Just like their last full length I couldn't get into everything. The meat of this release lies with the songs "Master Failure", "Epidemic" and "The Witness". The rest is hit and miss with "An Accident of History" being the biggest miss of em all. Whatever acolytes given to this release from wild eyed hipster man/boys should be subject to scrutiny because of their wishful thinking clouding their judgement. What SALOME is doing is certainly nothing new unless you've just gotten into this genre after spending years lusting after the bass player of SUPERCHUNK from afar.

Label: http://www.profoundlorerecords.com

Myspace: http://myspace.com/salomedoom