I remember when I first came across Desert Storm… well the location at least. It was a cold and rainy Hammerfest, on the Stoner stage and fuck me, if I wasn’t blown away by them from the outset – so much so that I embarked on an almost 24 hour round trip to London to catch them live not long after, only to find out they were playing in my home city a couple of days before. Oh well! Having taken a break, they’re now back with even more new material – how has the time apart affected them?
I’m very pleased to say that they are 100% back with a vengeance. Their sludgy take on Orange Goblin has never sounded so good as on penultimate track ‘Lockjaw’, which could not be much more groove filled with an almost hardcore style riffing at times, much akin also to the likes of ‘Anointing of Seer’ by genre stalwarts High on Fire. While the aggression is there, grabbing you by the throat as much as ever, there is definitely a hint of something deeper and wider to the breadth of their writing, as a different feel peeks out on a couple of occasions.
Final track ‘Rebirth’ actually takes me quite by surprise – it’s not something I ever imagined coming from this band, as it absolutely reeks, in the best possible way, of ‘The Demented Man’ by Hawkwind, which is one of my favourite album tracks by them. Not to say it’s a take-off in any manner, more the unexpected manner, the soft exquisite tones that demonstrate how good Matt’s vocals genuinely are and how well he can actually sing when he’s not joining the rest of the band in creating an all-out aural assault on our eardrums! ‘The Path Of Most Resistance’ follows a similar feel at times, certainly at the beginning and it’s more than halfway through the track before we get on to something more akin to their usual style of writing.
What this album does do is serve to show that sometimes that time apart can help, as the maturity and variance shown in their song writing on this release has developed even more. While they were more than capable of making you break your own neck headbanging along to their riffing before, the difference and their sheer ability shown in the more subtle arts on display at times here show that it was clearly time well spent. Their stock surely has not been higher than with the release of this album.
- ‘Omens’ is released today (Friday 1 May). You can get your copy HERE.
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