Centrifuge – Visions Old, Feeling Cold
This is a 5 song CDR MCD. “Shunt” begins with a low key, bass and clean guitar dirge, darkly melodic, clean vocals, that has a psychedelic edge. At just over 3 minutes the distortion kicks in and the melodic elements transform into a more Doomy Rock vibe. “Ethanol” has a distorted bass foundation and a heavy Rock core. The clean singing sort of stabs out short lines that decay over the simplistic dirgey riffs. There is only one track here that comes in under the 6 minute mark, as they draw out the plodding bass concentrated progressions, and develop the Stoner Rock vibe. Though Stoner Rock is a bit of a cheap description really, it doesn’t go that far, but the riffs are too rock based to be real sludgey, and aren’t really Doom enough to be Doom. It is essentially morose heavy “Rock” The vocals swim in reverb for a more disembodied feel, that helps add to the altered state impressions, and the guitar occasionally indulge in some more dissonant, melodic and relaxed breaks. Ultimately you can’t quite pigeon hole what Centrifuge is doing here and I’m not sure how I feel about it. There are some solid grooves, and I like the more abstracted guitar moments, the distorted low end works great… I’m maybe a little uncertain about the vocals, and the tendency to draw out lines till they fade away, but at the same time they do fit pretty well. There is a lot of mood here, and I also can appreciate that, but something is stopping me from really being over the top for this, and I don’t quite know what it is. It may simply be that I loved this bands first two demos from several years ago, and their more recent work has gone a little more traditional than those recordings. This has grown on me even over the short course of a couple listens, and no doubt will have some appeal for many of you. – Scott
Worm Gear 