Band:	Snailking
Album:	Storm
Style:	Doom metal, Sludge metal, Stoner metal
Release date:	September 15, 2014
A review by:	R'Vannith

01. To Wonder
02. Premonitions
03. Slithering
04. Requiem
05. Void

All things considered from a human's perspective, a snail is a pretty vulnerable little creature. Not Snailking though. They have a vice-versa kind of deal going on in their full-length debut. The snail is the listener, and the bottom of a heavily flattening boot is this band's low-end and bass burgeoning delivery of doom. It's not an ideal situation for any snail, as Snailking remorselessly reigns here.

With their name being taken from a Ufomammut record, you might expect a similar stoner swirl of psychedelia to line the spirals of Snailking's shell. While such expectations are met at well divided locations throughout the record, everything gives way to the sheer bulk of a slow moving sludge and stoner metal combination, progressing all the while with a doom metal foundation. If the structure of this record can be likened to its title, it's the kind of storm that lasts for days on end, the regularity of thunder and lightning never ceasing and all things being overcast and generating a shadowed darkness over the listener's land. No sunshine for you.

The likes of "Requiem," being just shy of seventeen minutes, is an oppressively dense sludge hymn which doesn't entirely shirk stoner metal melody, but takes its damn time to deliver such to the heaving motion of a steady tempo, proceeding with a doom pace and tone.

Variety isn't a promise nor a necessity here, but the well founded links to their name's origin in Ufomammut provide a scattering of psychedelic passages to aid in the diversity of sound. Further use of these comparatively quietened psychedelic segments, as well as emphasis on the more up-tempo increases in stoner metal sections, such as those which stir "Slithering," would aid in creating more noticeable tunes, particularly to break into the parts where the album finds its longest extensions, as they serve to uplift the sound from any states of monotony which are prone to set into this kind of metal. The lengthy intro to "Requiem," containing the sound of rain and an echoed guitar pattern, best demonstrates the band's ability at this. For the most part, Snailking do well to avoid overextension of repetition without variation, despite the considerably long duration of the tracks, managing such with what it is well written in Storm.

The vocal arrangements seem largely irrelevant and additional for the duration of the record, and shoved into position behind the density of instrumentation. From what is audible of them, the delivery is split between a cleaner stoner type and a harsher growled alternative, neither really finding ample room to provide any enhancement to the record. The domination set in by the rhythm section overpowers what would be a fairly distinctive vocal contrast if made more noticeable in this context.

Otherwise, it's an all onward trail by Snailking, the sludge texture they leave in these five tracks behind containing a thick mix of stoner and doom. In terms of style it can be associated with Yob in psychedelics, as well as a Kongh meets Conan sort of exercise in doom, Snailking striking similarly to the latter two of these contemporary bands who seek sonic devastation and destruction by way of deliberately drawn out doom pacing and across the board amplified heaviness, here harnessed by quality production designed to increase distortion and feedback along the slithering nature of the lines laid out by the time taking rhythm section.

As a debut record, Storm is remarkably well structured for its style, demonstrating an early maturity in the band's song writing in the studio. It's more than likely that this band will live up to their name in the future, if they haven't already.