Band:	Schubmodul
Album:	Lost In Kelp Forest
Style:	Stoner rock, Stoner metal
Release date:	February 23, 2024
A review by:	musclassia

01. Voyage
02. Emerald Maze
03. Renegade One
04. Silent Echoes
05. Ascension
06. Revelations

Instrumental stoner rock/metal may be extensively explored, but that doesn’t mean that everything worth doing in the genre has yet been done. As the adventurers of Schubmodul travel from the depths of space to the depths of the ocean, they produce an album that is very compelling in its own way.

This German trio are but a few years old, and are already following up their 2022 debut Modul I with a well-crafted sophomore record. When it comes to instrumental music, the idea of an album concept does feel limited in the scope of its implementation, but with artwork that has first depicted extraterrestrial travel and now deep sea diving, Schubmodul have some aspirations towards album themes, each time venturing into murky and unknown frontiers above or below the earth’s surface, respectively. The narratives are somewhat supported by spoken word samples, but the main attraction of Lost In Kelp Forest is its instrumental content, which is something to savour.

Schubmodul are one of those bands that, like acts such as King Buffalo or Elder, linger at the intersection between stoner rock and stoner metal, shying away from the kind of crushingly dense tone that would place it unambiguously in stoner doom territory, but still having enough heft on several songs to not simply be classed as stoner rock. The album’s opening track, “Voyage”, is one of the songs closer to rock, albeit with a meatiness to the guitar riff tone, and is perhaps one of the more conventional-sounding songs here, although there’s a nice shimmering aura to its midsection.

For me, it’s the two longest songs on Lost In Kelp Forest that have really grabbed my attention. First, the 10-minute “Emerald Maze” opens with a subtly dark psychedelic atmosphere, mixes things up with a passage of swaggering rock, and changes tone once more for a warmly emotional midsection, one that is elevated in style by a delightful lead guitar motif. For me, the thing that has elevated this record above so many instrumental stoner albums is the emotionality that Schubmodul demonstrate themselves capable of across the record, particularly in the solos and lead guitar parts, and they also make occasional but effective use of keyboards, which add an extra degree of pathos to the closing minutes of “Emerald Maze”.

Similarly captivating to that song is “Silent Echoes”, which was the first track to really capture my attention on the album. What it really brought to mind was Methadone Skies and their 2019 record Different Layers Of Fear, a mostly-instrumental stoner rock/metal album that had quite a distinctive sound and a pleasantly large amount of emotional depth to it. The ominous mid-tempo chugging along of “Silent Echoes”, as well as the satisfying texturing of higher-pitched layers, builds an inviting soundscape, and the subsequent slowing down and adding metallic heft to the riffs only escalates the song’s impact. A final grandstand with a winding guitar solo caps everything off really nicely.

These two aforementioned tracks are the highlights of Lost In Kelp Forest, but the remaining songs have their own charms. The guitarwork shines once more on “Renegade One”, but in a different fashion, as the recurring lead work has a real daintiness to its tone that is rarely heard in stoner rock/metal, and “Ascension” has a touch of Elder’s to its lush jammy instrumentation, while also featuring the heaviest portion of the record in its closing minutes. “Revelations” isn’t the strongest track here, but it does lead the album home in energetic fashion with a driving closing few minutes.

Lost In Kelp Forest might not necessarily blow anyone’s mind, but for those like me that have a general fondness for stoner rock and metal yet find that the standout releases can get hidden by the saturation of the scene, this is the kind of record that’s worth setting time aside for in order to give it a spin.