Band:	Faces Of Bayon
Album:	Heart Of The Fire
Style:	Doom metal, Stoner metal
Release date:	June 2011

01. Brimstoned
02. Ethereality
03. Godmaker
04. The Original Sin
05. Where The Golden Road Ends
06. The Fire Burns At Dawn

It's time to plunk down some coin on thank you cards. Lazy former reviewers keep bouncing gifts my way? First Collin is too busy being French or something to bother with Ixion's latest awesome endeavor. Now Marcel is too busy luring traveling doom bands to his lair, then punishing their livers with whisky and beer? and forwards Faces Of Bayon my way. Apparently the key to global economic recovery is investing in Hallmark stock.

So? Faces Of Bayon, huh? They are a stoner doom band that hail from Fitchburg, Massachusetts and, if Heart Of The Fire is any indication, their neighbors likely hate them.

They play, well, as one might expect from the prior sentence, stoner-style doom with a heaping side portion of psychedelia. Riffs are slow and low. By low, I mean heavy on the low end. Sounds they dropped the tuning pegs down a few notches? and didn't stop there, bumping the low end while cutting out the high/mid ranges. The band assault you with earth shaking, bone jarring riffs that have a fuzzed out feel. Roared death-style vocals add to the impact.

Drummer Matt Davis plays an integral part in not only keeping the bruising going, but utilizes the slow, fuzzed groove to take the fore from time to time. I love the tribal-sounding tom stomping during the 1:00-2:00 mark of "Ethereality". Sadly, Davis passed away earlier this year, after the recording had been completed?

With just their brand of stoner doom, you've already got a pretty enjoyable album, but they don't stop there. They add loads of brain-melting feedback to close out some of the longer tracks. After the first two tracks and 20 minutes, the band shift gears entirely and break out with "Godmaker", a song reminiscent of a gloomier version of Pink Floyd's "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun". The album also closes out on a trippy vibe with "The Fire Burns At Dawn." Both are nice counters to longed thundering tracks and waves of distorted feedback that proceed them.

So the album, which loosely details the descent of Lucifer from the place with all the clouds to the place with all the fire has a pretty great flow to it. The songs crush, but every two bruising tracks are followed by one of the mellower ones to help you chill before they harsh your buzz (man) and start laying out more mighty riffs.

This, their first album, was dedicated to Matt Davis, and it's a pretty damned good monument.