Well, well, well! What do we have here? What we have with Stash is a sludge-o-rama power blues ‘orgy’ from a label more renowned with pound n’ grind and gore metal. Along with Morgion’s Solinari album this has to mark a milestone for the label in attempting new regions of extremity. However, there’s not a lot to say about the album as a whole. Locking a genuinely drugged and trippy atmosphere with a crushing, distortion-laced sound consisting solely of unbelievably snail-paced power chords with an almost plagiaristic early Eyehategod vocal style, this is sludge that doesn’t threaten to get you smokin’ with the guys. Never fringing on the classic riff department as Iron Monkey have done, possessing the rabid edge of Buzz.Oven or coming close to the poundy, grindy style of either Flesh Parade or Eyehategod, these guys seem content in simply recycling the same old song structures, morbid slo-mo-ness and riff patterns found on any other sludge release. Each song is nearly indistinguishable from the one before, and musically this isn’t a large leap at all from the MCD, Methods For Attaining Extreme Altitudes . Also, their liberal use of samples also lets them fall into a sort of cliché, don’t you think? All in all, a release no different from everybody else doing the power-blues thing. Steer away, this is just another Electric Wizard/ Sleep copyist, without the originality or inspiration of either.

[5]

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