Even during their hiatus, YOB have maintained their position in the vanguard of contemporary doom because of the quality and originality of their mind bending doom-metal. Now they have returned and are prepared to reach even greater heights (and doom depths).
The band’s latest album, “The Great Cessation” is definitely YOB’s finest hour. Led by Mike Scheidt’s crushing doom riffage and relentless stomp, YOB have easily reclaimed their rightful cosmic doom throne while generating new fans and momentum.

Roadburn will celebrate YOB’s return to the fold by offering the band the opportunity to play different shows at both the 013 venue, and the Midi Theatre during the festival.

Mike Scheidt comments: “YOB is quite thrilled to announce our first European trip to play the most excellent Roadburn festival in 2010. We have wanted to come over to Europe to play for many years and to have our first show be at Roadburn is beyond incredible for us. We are looking forward to sharing in the atmosphere of the fest with all of the excellent bands and fans that will be in attendance. April will not get here soon enough! DOOM!!!”

This is Walter’s (Roadburn’s promoter / artistic director’s) playlist for September 2009. Please share your personal Top 5 in the comments box below.

Masters of reality - Pine-Cross Dover

Masters of Reality – Pine / Cross Dover ( Cd – Brownhouse / Mascot)
Pairing rhythm-heavy tracks to long and winding free-form instrumentals, Masters of Reality return to form with Pine / Cross Dover. Departing from their previous acoustic leanings, the band gives a nod to Public Image Ltd and Mahavishnu Orchestra, while still sporting the distinctive Masters of Reality sound, courtesy of Chris Goss’ legendary production talents.

Shrinebuilder - Self Titled

Shrinebuilder – S/T (CD – Neurot Recordings)
Perhaps the most anticipated “Roadburn album” of the year: Shrinebuilder’s self-titled debut album melds the different styles of Scott Kelly (Neurosis), Scott “Wino” Weinrich (The Obsessed, Wino), Al Cisneros (OM, Sleep) and Dale Crover (Melvins). Memorable, canyon-size riffs lead to psychedelic guitar solos; subdued vocals lend mellow parts; and the wandering, groove-laden ambience ultimately creates crushing doom riffage, which is only strengthened by the natural vibe between these musical heavyweights.

OM - God Is Good

OM – God Is Good (LP / CD – Drag City)
OM’s first full-length featuring the Al Cisneros / Emil Amos (of Grails fame) line-up. God Is Good drifts into uncharted Middle Eastern territory amid OM’s signature hypnotic repetitions. Strings, sitars, tablas and
flutes lead the way as we travel the acid drenched, ancient routes of the Holy Land.

Bong – S/T (LP – Contact Infinite Exchange Records for availablity)
Sunn 0))) meets Sleep? Hawkwind jamming with Ravi Shankar? All that and more: meet Bong. Their self-titled debut album is a mind-bending headfuck!

Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound – When Sweet Sleep Returned ( LP / CD – TeePee Records)
Universe-spanning, 100% undiluted psychedelic rock that sounds like the very best of the psychedelic era (the late 60s / early 70s), ranging from Crazy Horse to Spirit and from Blue Cheer to 13th Floor Elevators.

Yob - The Great Cessation

YOB – The Great Cessation (CD Profound Lore)
YOB’s latest album, The Great Cessation is definitely the band’s finest hour. Led by Mike Scheidt’s crushing doom riffage and relentless stomp, YOB have easily reclaimed their rightful cosmic doom throne while generating new fans and momentum.

Yob - Great Cessation

Oregon’s YOB have carved out a niche of “cosmic doom,” which is a descriptor, not a subgenre. Few bands do what YOB do– marry Black Sabbath’s heavy and psychedelic sides. Sabbath did both equally well. But when they wheeled out acoustic guitars and bongo drums, they were just taking a break. YOB keep the pressure up, driving riffs into subterranean depths, yet sending melodies spiraling skyward. 2005’s The Unreal Never Lived perfected such duality. It found the intersection among roaring guitars, yoga class, black light dreams, and white light ecstasy. Black Sabbath with Dio as singer changed their name to Heaven and Hell for legal reasons. Had they followed through sonically, YOB might have resulted.

Read the full review at Pitchfork: Album Reviews: YOB: The Great Cessation.

Yob

“It was an education, to say the least. Legally we can’t even say the band name.”

No matter how lousy your 2008 might have been, chances are it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it was for Mike Scheidt. Following the break-up of Eugene, Oregon doom masters Yob in 2005, the guitarist formed a new band, choosing the seemingly innocent-sounding moniker Middian, and released the impressive The Age Eternal on Metal Blade in 2007. However, that band’s name would open a can of worms the size of an oil drum, thanks to an overtly litigious, defunct nu-metal outfit from Milwaukee, Wisconsin that went by the name of Midian.

“It was just a very, very dark time,” he laughs, as only a person who has been to hell and back can do. “It just seemed like there was no end in sight for a while.”

Funny how things work out, though. Here we are in the middle of 2009, Yob is back in business, reunited with a brilliant new record to flog, and the outgoing Scheidt couldn’t be happier to talk about something that doesn’t involve the circuitous American legal process.

Please read the full article at: Hellbound » Blog Archive » YOB: Zen and the Art of Crushing Skulls.

Yob - The Great Cessation

Lovingly pinched from one of our favorite websites: Playing in a band isn’t supposed to be pretty or fair, but what happened to Middian was about as dogshit awful as it gets. Mike Scheidt’s post-YOB project had every indication of surpassing YOB’s already awe-inspiring output (and this, mind you, I base on “Dreamless Eye” alone), and then some do-nothing, go-nowhere band from – well, who the fuck cares, really? – hits them with a cease and desist order due to a trademarked name. If you can barely break even on tour, how are you going to pay for legal fees? The short answer is “You can’t,” so Middian hung it up.

That would have been a completely disastrous turn of events had Scheidt not resurrected YOB. And, judging by the anguished roar that he lets loose at two minutes and 23 seconds into lead track “Burning the Altar,” he also channeled the rage and pent-up aggression of the Middian experience into The Great Cessation. Doom – be it traditional, crust, funeral, psychedelic, or whatever other sub-sub-genre’s out there – is meant to be dour and slow, but here it’s also furious.

Please read the full review at:  StonerRock.com – YOB – The Great Cessation.

Yob - The Unreal Never Lived

(From our archives):  The cataclysmic supremacy of doom alchemists, Yob seems to rise exponentially with each album, and  The Unreal Never Lived soars above the paltry offerings of the metal mainstream like a doomy avatar.

Mike Scheidt is a pan-dimensional, guitar shaman who wields his lead-footed axe with the searing accuracy of battle hardened Visigoth, bludgeoning the agog listener with pendulous swathes of throaty Gibson overkill, only to confound expectation with unctuous tones of blissful psychedelic beauty.

To say that Mssrs Scheidt (Git / Vox ), Sato (Bass), Foster’s (drums) doomodelic assault verges on the transcendental is cheap hyperbole for so mountainous a composition, inspirational heavy that plunges the shrieking cerebellum into a broiling sea of pungent lysergic imagery, and ultimately I lack the verbiage to succinctly quantify the peerless majesty that is the mighty Yob…

For me, at it’s most omnipotent,  The Unreal Never Lived incubates a glorious, deeply penetrating feeling of euphoria that effortlessly transcends many of the rigid limitations of traditional doom, if not rock music itself, and thus it would be remiss of me to dissect so adventurous a work by the sum of its parts. Since this would be to it’s detriment, simply put, the genius of this album is in it’s sumptuous totality, so one must delve deeply into it’s immersive, riff-heavy folds!

The wondrous idiosyncrasy of Mike’s signature double barrelled vox whose unerring ability to affect both black metal menace and exultant melodic castrati with equal aplomb remains breathtaking.  The Unreal Never Lived is a truly magnificent experience, exemplary heavy metal unfettered by the shackles of convention…

This is THE quintessential Yob release thus far deserving of it’s uniform praise, but I will say this, read as many glowing reviews as you wish, then simply ignore them as The Unreal Never Lived is infinitely better…
In a scene clogged rotten with a plethora of cut and paste metal, it gladdens the soul to bear witness to such elegiac heavy metal grandeur, and besides, this sonic titan drops riffs heavier than a marble portcullis.
Jason De L’Orme

Yob - The Great Cessation

Reunited “cosmic doom metal” band Yob has completed work on its new full-length album, The Great Cessation, for a July 14 release via Profound Lore Records  (The album’s lead track, ‘Burning the Altar’, has been posted online at this location).

Long respected as one of doom metal’s finest and most potent bands, Yob creates mastodonic, mind-bending music.  The Great Cessation was recorded in the band’s hometown of Eugene, Oregon with fast-rising producer Sanford Parker (Pelican, Nachtmystium) and is unquestionably the trio’s finest hour.

via BLABBERMOUTH.NET – YOB: ‘The Great Cessation’ Details Revealed.

Yob - Catharsis

Us doomsters Yob, who recently reunited finished recording their new album, entitled The Great Cessation due out this summer via Profound Lore Records (Yob has posted  ‘Burning the Altar’ on their MySpace page, it’s the lead track on The Great Cessation).
As for the new material, mastermind Mike Scheidt had this to say about it: “The newest material is such a trip, I don’t know how exactly to describe it.  The final ‘epic’ song  is like a mix of the song ‘Catharsis’ and ‘The Unreal Never Lived…’ big clean guitar intro, big slow melodic riffs, patient big builds that explode… it`s going to be huge. It`s also going to be an immense challenge to keep this album in the 60-minute mark. Five songs total. Lots of clean singing. Still lots of screams and death roars too.”

This is what Roadburn Drew Webster had to say about Yob’s debut, Catharsis back in 2003: YOB are a band that combines equal amounts of space of power, songwriting and jam ability.

Stylistically they fall into a category of new school power doom, but with some old school metal thrown in and even a touch of psychedelia. Think  ‘Jerusalem’ meets a less grungy sounding ‘Come My Fanatics’ with an early Melvins gait to it

As for the vocals, lead singer Mike Sheidt sounds like Lori Crover channeling the voice of Stephen Pearcy (Ratt). If that vocal description sounds slightly frightening to you, rest assured that it is a cool voice  (if perhaps an acquired taste) and it is entirely refreshing to hear a vocalist that can actually sing. There are moments of guttural ‘cookie monster’ doom vox mixed in, and these work really well when contrasted with the higher pitched singing.

YOB’s greatest strength is their reverence for space and the way they parlay that into an unhurried songwriting style that is slow and deliberate, and (most importantly) has something to say. This is a group that builds their songs from the ground up. One chord appears, is repeated, is joined by another chord and another until slowly it builds into a riff which eventually evolves into a song.

The songs are then adorned and fleshed out with the contrasting vocal style and some mid- to uptempo parts. Each of the three very long tracks (7, 18 and 23 minutes) exhibits some of the constantly evolving progressions that characterize good psychedelic music as well.

Catharsis is a well-crafted, well recorded, great sounding record that place YOB as part of an emerging U.S. doom movement that includes Orodruin, The Lair of the Minotaur and The Mighty Nimbus as well as veterans like Penance, Negative Reaction and While Heaven Wept. This is a really solid debut record that demands your attention.”