Band:	Bong
Album:	Thought And Existence
Style:	Drone doom metal, Psychedelic doom metal
Release date:	May 04, 2018
A review by:	RaduP

01. The Golden Fields
02. Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

For the first time in their history, Bong took three years to make a new album. And, boy, what an improvement in every field, with lush instrumentation, a blend of new influences, riffs galore and even blast beats and a Migos feature. Or nah, it's just a good old shamanic transcendent Bong album.

Bong did indeed take quite a long time to come out with this record considering that they released eight albums in the last ten years. So likely, the existence of this album has been given a lot of thought, right? Well, Thought And Existence isn't much different from the previous few Bong albums, being still comprised of two songs, but staying more on the "shorter" side, compared to the megalithic Stoner Rock in which each of the two tracks were about as long as Thought And Existence in its entirety.

For those familiar with Bong, they'll likely be happy to get some 35 minutes more of meditative shamanic drone doom, they may still long for the sitar days, but they likely got over that. For those unfamiliar with Bong, just be warned that this is a brand of doom that really requires your patience, much more so than even funeral doom. There is no instant gratification and the listener has to let himself be immersed. Bong is music that moves at a glacially slow pace, usually built upon a single monolithic riff drowned in distortion, whose repetition coupled with the percussion creates a droning psychedelic ritualistic feel. And it is heavy enough to level the terrain. Think of it as the offspring of Dopesmoker. Despite of how short it is, the pace of the album makes it feel like hours have passed, thus it can be used as a sort of time machine.

There are two tracks on this album, both around the same length, but "Tlön Uqbar Orbis Tertius" has a significantly lighter and laid-back and perhaps even more upbeat vibe than "The Golden Fields". The album's opener starts a bit more ambient, before a voice narrates a quote from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Dream Of A Ridiculous Man which reads "It happened as it always does in dreams when skip over space and time and the laws of thought and existence and only pause upon the points on which the heart years", which seems to be the thematic focus of the album. As David Terry said about the inspiration behind the album, "Some memories are so intense that they remind us that we occupy unalterable moments in time? The past still exists, and this album is a tribute to those moments". "The Golden Fields" does get a bit more of a stoner doom feel later in the song, becoming much more expansive as even ritualistic chanting to add the cherry to the top of the hypnotic experience before giving way to "Tlön Uqbar Orbis Tertius".

While it wouldn't be hard to criticize Bong for not changing their formula and for being way too repetitive, at this point at least their album-releasing pace is a bit more relaxed. Old fans will be pleased and newcomers will either find it impenetrably boring or life-altering.

The ritual shall commence