Band:	Plog
Album:	Eucharist
Style:	Doom metal, Sludge metal, Stoner metal
Release date:	October 06, 2023
A review by:	musclassia

01. Symbol Of Wraith
02. Apostate
03. Eucharist
04. Echo From The Void

When it comes to stoner rock and stoner metal, female vocalists aren’t uncommon; for stoner doom specifically, though, the representation is lower. Bands such as Windhand have demonstrated that slow, gnarly fuzz and lighter-toned vocals can work very well together, so there’s clear scope for other bands to shine in this underrepresented niche: bands such as Plog, for example. Unfortunately, Eucharist isn’t quite at the level to allow them to stand out.

Hailing from Trondheim, Norway, Plog make it clear from the Bandcamp tags for Eucharist (#doom #stoner #riffs #fuzz) that originality isn’t necessarily a priority as far as their sophomore record is concerned. There notoriously is no shortage of stoner bands around right now, although there’s also enough genre addicts kicking about for most of these acts to find an audience. However, having a USP certainly isn’t a bad thing when it comes to standing out from this congested crowd, and it does feel relatively novel when hearing new singer Bianca Zaharia accompany slow, trudging walls of distortion on a song such as “Symbol Of Wraith”. This initial sound serves as a decent hook to draw listeners in; however, as the album progresses, songwriting deficiencies emerge that may cause some of those hooked listeners to wander astray.

To start with, Plog ticks the boxes when it comes to certain fundamentals; the production isn’t stellar, but there’s a decent depth to the sound and density to the distorted guitar tone, so they give their songs a solid platform on which to shine. When the band dive into the dense, doomy fuzz about a minute or so into “Symbol Of Wraith”, the guitar does feel eerily reminiscent of more recent Windhand, which I imagine isn’t entirely coincidental. Zaharia sings in a higher register to Dorthia Cottrell, however, adding a pleasant levity that nicely contrasts the heavy low end; there’s also some instrumental levity midway through with a well-executed clean psychedelic bridge section. Still, there’s times when this track doesn’t fully work for me; in particular the vocal melody in the chorus feels slightly at odds with the instrumentation.

Perhaps to demonstrate that they’re not a one-trick pony, Plog do shake things up in parts of Eucharist; “Apostate”, while not threatening to go into full desert rock mode, is a tad livelier and quite a bit bluesier than the two songs that it’s sandwiched between, especially during its guitar solo. It’s a natural and generally well executed change in tack; less natural is the jarring blast beat-laden passage early in final song “Echo From The Void”. Even overlooking how much the production muddies said blast beats, this segment feels like it was added just to wake people up, as it’s neither consistent with how the album has sounded up that point, nor is it really explored after this introductory snippet.

What really holds Eucharist back, however, is that the general level of songwriting just isn’t all that interesting; it’s not poorly written, but I’d say quite a bit of this album falls below the general standard required to be above average for the genre. Curiously, the song that suffers most on this front, the title track, also arguably has the album’s best moments. The first half of “Eucharist” is quite a slog; it’s very much in slow, plodding, super-fuzzy mode, but it’s just not delivered in an interesting way, relying on playing earth-shaking chords alone to be sufficiently engaging without offering more compositionally, while also lacking the necessary weight to the production to pull this off in the way that, say, Sleep can. What’s worse is that Plog decide to sideline Zaharia, replacing her with male vocals that simultaneously sound far away in the mix while also being coarse in tone. Frankly, I find them quite uninteresting, and even awkward when they try to play around with the pitch.

On each playthrough, it’s been in the first few minutes of “Eucharist” that I’ve found myself finding that I’m not particularly enjoying this record. It’s perhaps ironic, for an album so oriented towards density and heaviness, that it takes a stark shift towards the light for me to get somewhat back on board with Plog; around 7 minutes into “Eucharist”, the relentless assault of trudging doom dissipates, and the band pull right back for a quieter tone. It is here where Zaharia shines brightest on Eucharist; the emotion in her performance is very effective, and works very well with the more restrained, psychedelic, jam-like feel of the accompanying instrumentation. In these minutes, I find myself really enjoying this record; it’s a shame that I can’t say the same for more of it.

I do think that there is good potential in Plog; the second half of “Eucharist” shows that they can deliver genuinely impactful music, and even outside of that, the juxtaposition of heavy fuzzy doom and lighter singing shows itself to be more compelling than grimmer barked vocals. Going forward, though, I think they either need to find a producer that is able to unlock their full force and volume, or they need to offer something more engaging in their writing.