Aural Aggravation

Magnetic Eye Records

Christopher Nosnibor

This is my first encounter with Swedish psychedelic doom-riffers Domkraft, and it must be something to do with the power of three, given that this is the third single from the forthcoming third single by the trio.

And when a band puts out a nine-minute track as a single, you get a sense of where they’re coming from. This clearly isn’t a band going for radio play here, the no-compromise approach of a lack of an edit demonstrating a solid anti-commercial aesthetic. But then, how would you do justice to an absolute epic like this by cutting it down to three, four, or even five minutes?

No, you need to hear – and feel – the full thing, from end to end. Build? Yeah, you, might say it builds. After a couple of minutes or so that are a welter of guitars and a monster wall of riffage, it really takes off, before it simmers down into a lumbering, soaring expansiveness that’s even vaguely proggy. No criticism, but a sense that certain parts don’t quite deliver on the threat of the band’s bio or commentary on the single. If anything, this is very much for the better, because ‘Audiodome’ is so much more, and transitions between passages of varying tempo and weight to outstanding effect. Around the right-minute mark, they really slam in with some eight, and it thunders hard.

It feels less like a single than an album condensed into a single track. Epic is indeed the word.

AA