Album of the day: Saturnalia Temple – Aion Of Drakon

Praise for Saturnalia Temple ‘s Aion Of Drakon from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records: We first heard these occultic stoner psychedelic black doom Swedes on the 4 way split On The Powers Of The Sphinx, where they were teamed up with Aluk Todolo, Nightbringer and Nihil Nocturne. We were pleasantly surprised, as we were expecting some sort of black metal, but what we got was way more stonery and psychedelic, and as we described in that review sounding “like Kyuss at 16 rpm”, which still pretty much holds true.

This is tripped out, downtuned lysergic heaviness, thick stoner riffs, wild wah wah guitars, swirling occultic atmospheres, woozy low slung basslines, some serious grooves, and some totally tripped out, heavily effected vox, Electric Wizard fanatics might have just found their new band, that is if they were dreaming of a band that sounded sort of like Electrix Wizard, but WAY weirder and WAY more druggy and seriously fucked up. Which is pretty much what these guys are.

Laying down massive thick, super distorted riffs, the band slow motion swinging, slipping from stoner groove, to doomy churn and back again, the bass doing that weird walking thing that was all over Sabbath songs. The guitars occasionally erupting into little druggy effects drenched licks, and then the vocals, drawled and woozy and hazy and laid back, also wreathed in effects, a sort of true doom croon, but run through a wall of blown out fractured effects. And it’s not just the sounds, the songs are pretty fucking bizarre too.

Aion Of Drakon builds the whole track on a weird effected stuttery guitar loop thing, making it sound super hypnotic, a pulsing and pulsating groove, still super saturated, and in-the-red, but warped and subtly rhythmic, wound around big pounding drums, and all blurred into heaving black swells, the sound building to almost raga like tranced out stoner doom rituals, super psychedelic and seriously freaky.

Some of the other tracks slip into a more straight forward lumbering lurch, but even then, things continue to twist and transform, while other tracks, weave all manner of sounds, high end streaks, flute like flutters, warped effects, processed vox, into impossibly damaged, bit irresistibly mesmerizing slo-mo grooves, some tracks with dubbed out drums careening all over the place, sounds weird, and it is, but it works.

Imagine a Sabbath 45, dipped in peyote, melted a bit over an open flame, and then spun manually on an old victrola, broadcast through a wall of Orange amps, heavy heady, far out and fucking absolutely incredible. Just might be our new favorite metal record. And was we mentioned above, all of you folks freaking out over Electric Wizard, Saturnalia Temple is what ET would sound like if you were dosed with PCP and horse tranquilizers, which is, at least in this case, a very good thing.

At 40 years old, Aquarius is the oldest independent record store in San Francisco. We try to only carry music we love, and we’re always searching for more new, cool, weird and wonderful music. All of which we then share with you, our loyal customers.

Tags: Aion Of Drakon, Ajna Offensive, Album of the day, Aquarius Records, Occult Rock, Saturnalia Temple

This entry was posted on Monday, May 23rd, 2011 at 3:02 am and is filed under 2011, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.