Necropharmacon
I found these guys by using the ‘stoner rock’ tag search on band camp. They list their influences on Facebook to include pretty much all of my favourite bands, so I obviously have pretty high expectations coming into this! It would seem they are defunct (this article states that their last show was in May of 2010, and their facebook hasn’t been updated since March of 2010), but since they’ve produced a full-length album that’s available to download for free I figured they’d be an easy band to check out.
The only background I could find on the band is that they are from Indianapolis, feature two guitarists and virtually disappeared off the face of the internet sometime last year. A quick (read: stalkerish) Facebook search revealed that the lead vocalist has a personal Facebook page, but I felt creepy sending him a message asking about the demise of his band, so I didn’t. A six-month hiatus isn’t really very uncommon, but usually it comes via a dramatic announcement. Perhaps they really are the definitive starving artists, and no longer have internet access? If that’s the case, any publicity is good publicity!
Upon loading the first song off of “Prisoner of Experience”, I instantly liked it (embedded player is below). I’m easy; give me a downtuned riff and I’m happy. The distorted vocals are okay, pretty much what you would expect from stoner rock. Vocals are always what are hardest for me to get comfortable with. I’d be embarrassed to tell you how long it took for me to grow to love Neil Fallon of Clutch’s vocals as much as I do now. But these are fine and work with the style of music. I don’t know enough about drumming to tell you whether it’s good or bad, but it seems to flow with the guitar and bass pretty well and isn’t distracting. Perhaps someone in the comments could lend their expertise on that?
Because I instantly enjoyed it, it’s safe to say that this band doesn’t break any conventions when it comes to the genre. In other words, they may sound great, but the music isn’t necessarily original. Someone with a better memory than me would probably be able to make specific comparisons to other bands that sound like this. The lyrics didn’t jump out at me, so they are neither really profound nor really terrible.
Not all the songs are as strong as others. I don’t like the song “Regression” very much. I think it’s because of the vocal styling; seems out of place for me. The highlight of the album for me is the first song, “Transducer”, which starts out low and slow and has a really nice bridge/solo in the middle, showing some guitar skills outside of just slow, sludgy riffs. A wise decision for them to put that song at the very beginning, as it caught my attention right away.
I’m not sure whether these songs are just demos or the finished product, so I hesitate to comment on the production, but as a whole, i think it could be tighter. The riffs have a lazy feel to them, which might be the intention, after all, it is stoner rock.
Some of my comments seem a bit negative, but as a whole, I really enjoyed this album. Complete originality in music extremely hard to come by, and even harder to enjoy. It certainly isn’t a precursor to my enjoyment of an album. I could listen to bands that sound like Kyuss all day long, and indeed, these guys have a bit of Kyuss in them.
All in all, this is a pretty good addition to my stoner rock collection. I would really love to see them continue the band and see how they grow into their sound.
Listen to this if you like: Kyuss, Honky, Dozer
Don’t listen to this if you only like: Black Metal, Power Metal 
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