Band:	Tsar Bomba
Album:	Silent Queen
Style:	Stoner metal
Release date:	March 13, 2013
A review by:	Dane Train

01. Jesus Fuckin' Christ
02. Enter The Void
03. Flooded
04. Silent Queen
05. The Devil's Been Busy
06. Why Do You Live Here Yet?
07. Who Am I
08. Black Flag

Coughing up bloody chunks of lung as dust particles slice my eyes in blinding pain under the blacked out sun I seek shelter from psychotic biker gangs. This post-apocalyptic barren wasteland is the result of someone letting Tsar Bomba loose on the world. Some say that Tsar Bomba was a nickname for the Russian hydrogen bomb, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. Other claim it is a metal band from France. All I know is that nothing clean and holy survived.

This is the sort of stoner metal I dig. It is so dirty that a trip through the car wash with the top down still won't get you clean. Silent Queen is not so much a ground and pound assault against your senses but more of a tie you behind the truck and drag you punishment. Low, slow and full of doom, this band understands that heavy doesn't necessarily mean fast and overly aggressive. Think of Tsar Bomba as a power drill through your head as apposed to a bullet.

Often the strength of this record comes not from the notes they play but the ones they don't. The space between notes is so vital to the powerful atmospheres here. This is a prime case of less is more. This is not to say that it is a quiet record, especially on the vocal end. From the start if the album to the end, it seems like there is almost no end to vocalist's gravelly baritone, which I personally enjoyed. If you are more of a riff enthusiast then you'll be happy to know that there are solid, catchy riffs all the way through. The riffs of "The Devil's Been Busy" is parasite that latches onto your brain and stays there all day as you descend into madness. Never riding the hi hat, the jazzy drumming drives this record forward in such a tasteful way that I wish more bands used this style. While most bands stick their bass player in the corner and have them keep time, here we have a instrument that not only leads several of the songs but really shines on it's own. Package all those elements together and you have 100 megatons of nuclear fall out.

If you like your metal in the vein of dirty southern American stoner, à la Corrosion Of Conformity or Down, give this a shot, especially considering this is a band from France...and I thought that French metal was only about giant space whales. Shows you what I know.