Album of the day: Serpent Venom – Carnal Alter

Lovingly pinched from The Sleeping Shaman: Serpent Venom have been touting their formidable version of seventies rock mixed with St.Vitus style doom for a while now and they are just getting better and better at it. The last time they played with Devil and Age of Aquarius…sorry Age of Taurus, they tore the place apart leaving the other bands wondering why they needed to play at all. That was on a bad night by their standards, so what we have here with Carnal Altar is the band on the best night you will ever see them. It’s like a sealed capsule that has just been broken open by a puff smoking hippy hoping to find his next big hit. Well here it is fella! If this doesn’t go down in doom sonic history as one of those quintessential weed stoked British releases, then the world really has gone to shit.

I for one think we need to count ourselves lucky to be living on the same isle as these masters of a bygone era. Okay, so our everyday existence has indeed shifted across the decades, with it being pretty hard to find an afghan coat smelling of a freshly skinned goat, or petrulli scented flares, or a gaggle of longhaired louts with a penchant for saying “man” and “groovy” between every other word. But hey there are other ways to hold onto the past, and to my ears at least this is one helluva throw back to oily British bikes, the smell of Castrol R roaring out of coked exhausts, and the sound of loud rock music pouring onto the otherwise distracted occupants of the north circular. Yes, Serpent Venom’s sound screams vintage, but in such a way that you can’t help but feel a compulsion to jump on the back of this denim soaked monster for a ride.

Continue reading: The Sleeping Shaman – Serpent Venom ‘Carnal Altar’ CD/2xLP 2011.

Tags: Album of the day, Carnal Alter, doom, Pete Hamilton-Giles, Serpent Venom, The Church Within Records, The Sleeping Shaman

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 5th, 2011 at 3:17 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.