Primitive and Deadly: a rich ore of atmospheric and terse desert-Western soundscape doom rock

Earth, Primitive and Deadly, Southern Lord, CD lord 195 (2014)

Since reinventing themselves as an instrumental doom rock band with “HEX: or Printing in the Infernal Method”, Earth have been steadily mining their particular vein of atmospheric and laconic desert-Western doom. This album takes that style to its most pop-friendly with definite songs, three of which feature vocalists Mark Lanegan (he sings on two songs) and Rabia Shaheen Qazi (she takes charge on a third), that boast distinct riffs, lead guitar solos and solid if unassuming drumming. Against Adrienne Davies’ sure and steady hands on the skins, Earth front-man Dylan Carlson carves out his terse guitar riffs and melodies, and then on top of these builds whatever other instrumentation of his and guest musicians’ contributions take his fancy. This results in an album that is typically Earth in its economy, suggesting as always something deeper, harsher and more expansive lurking beneath the otherwise po-faced music.

“Torn by the Fox of the Crescent Moon” harks back to that aforementioned 2005 album both in its cryptic title and style of minimal instrumental soundscape rock. The experimentation really begins with “There is a Serpent coming” with Lanegan’s medicine-man vocals quavering a bit unsteadily over music not quite aligned with him and blaring a bit too loudly. Once the singing is out of the way, the song blazes into its full glory of hazy psychedelic burning-sun / flaming-red-rock soundtrack music for that post-apocalyptic Western dystopian film epic yet to be directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, with perhaps a screenplay from Cormac McCarthy.

Earth’s confidence in this sub-genre grows with the next track “From the Zodiacal Light”: Shaheen Qazi’s sultry witch vocal and the band’s twangy countrified desert languor, cutting through a dry heatwave, prove to be a match made in Drone Doom Heaven. Despite the song’s obvious heaviness and the simmering, smouldering tension within, it moves with stately grace together with Shaheen Qazi whose range flits from wailing banshee to smoky blues-flecked C&W. Thereafter, the band continues into further sultry desert psychedelia of a sometimes massive and expansive nature.

It seems that with this album, Earth have summarised their efforts across the last several albums beginning with “HEX …” and continuing through the “Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light” pair, picking up some tendencies those earlier albums hinted at and expanding on them here. A strong affinity for nature and the Native American shamanic cultural tradition, which has always been present in the band’s work since its inception in the early 1990s, suffuses the album: the two guest vocalists seem to be as much conducting secret rituals in which they act as psychopomp guides between our material world and the spiritual world as they are singing. The band seems poised to take up another direction entirely and where Earth will go next may end up a big surprise.

Contact: Southern Lord