No particular expectations for this. The first track was straightforward stoner metal/rock with a strong doomish vibe and solid clean vocals. An entire album of that kind of material would have been quite satisfying, and certainly the best parts of this disc for me are when they're in that vein--which isn't all that much. The amount of rock influence in the riffage here makes me hesistant to call this doom as a whole, but they're certainly far more metallic than a typical '70s throwback stoner rock band.
Since I found that initial track to be pretty decent, it was disappointing they chose to try their hand at a number of different things throughout the rest of the disc. Starting around the last third of the second song, they start to integrate aggro vocals, which just make the music seem like generic screamy sludge or southern metal. The three 7+ min. tracks showcase mellower sections, like the long acoustic guitar-driven section of "Manna," which seems like an emotive minimalist ballad a '90s grunge band might write (I mean this in the best possible way). They also try out psychedelic sounding material to a limited degree, particularly in the closer "Violet Sky." It's hard to evaluate this as a whole since the album oscillates between straightforward doomier stuff, the angrier aggro stuff, the mellow parts, Sabbathier sections, and the more '70s sounding psych parts. There's even a cover of Negative Approach's "Evacuate," which is fine musically but has those dreaded aggro vocals out in full force. Some stuff works here, some stuff doesn't. Didn't wow me but the good parts are probably worth what I paid.
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