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Middian: Age eternal
22/09/10 || InquisitorGeneralis
Whacked out stoner/doom metal is something I should hate. Only The Sword and Baroness have been able to breach my strong, anti-stoner metal defense. Those conquests took large amounts of melody and groove plus a more up-tempo style than most others in the genre. Oh, and I was probably really fucken high while listening to them. As far as straight doom goes…yeah, nice try. I’d rather listen to Yngwie’s balls slap against a hooker’s ass than straight up doom metal. It bores the living shit out of me.
So, when Middian’s “Age Eternal” came down my lane I was certain I would piss and shit all over it like the dominatrix does to the Japanese businessman in the German fart-porn I just watched before writing this review. Even though they are broken up, I guess Middian were a big deal because the main dude in the band was, and now is back in, YOB and they were on legendary label Metal Blade too. You know all of that means jack fucking shit to me. But, I can’t lie. I thought the cover artwork was pretty fucken cool so I decided to give it a go.
Let me ruin the surprise for you: I don’t actually despise this. “Age Eternal” has some genuinely cool moments when the three-piece band decides to be more progressive and funky. When the tunes settle for standard stoner/doom noise and drone though I lose interest faster than Lord K gets a boner at an Evanescence concert. “Dreamless eye” is a pretty interesting opener that has a cool intro before rocking the same decent riffs for the first four minutes. But then Middian goes into kick ass stoner-breakdown city at the 4:30 mark and really lay it down. If only every song on “Age Eternal” had such awesome sections…
Sadly, but expectedly, they don’t. “The blood of icons” though is another winner with a very cool, spacey, high-on-peyote sounding introduction that leads into the expected slow, riff heavy beating. However, Middian pick up the pace for the heart of the song and rock out quite impressively at the end. There is even some Frank Zappa shit going on in the last quarter of this twelve-minute long beast.
The title track loses me though. It is fourteen minutes of way-too-slowness and is pretty fucken boring. Middian were definitely listening to Mastodon when they wrote “The Celebrant” is the album’s most standard-sounding metal song; no extended, drawn-out long riff or intro section to be found there. But, nothing exciting either. “Sink to the center” ends the album on a long, bad note for me. Again, it’s too goddamn slow all the way through and lacks the interesting riffs and rocking sections that are found in “Age Eternal’s” two tracks. Also, the vocals get really annoying at the end too.
When the vocals are in easy-mode they sound like Brett from Mastodon and are enjoyable. When they are in scream-screech mode they sound like a cat getting ass-raped by Doberman Pincer on LSD (bow wow wow yippie yo yippie… y… MY DEAD GRANDMOM IS COMING AT ME WITH A KNIFE!!!). The guitar and bass work is cool and there are many creative, interesting riffs on “Age Eternal” that really make the album stand out for me. The drumming is nothing special but this is stoner/doom metal so I was not expecting George Kollias or Inferno behind the kit. The band does kick it several times over the course of “Age Eternal” and it is clear this not your average, talentless group of stoners with just one riff to play and all day to play it.
Let me just say, for a band of this genre this is a big-time score for me. I really tried to step out of my death/thrash comfort zone and give this a thorough going over for all you drone and doom fans out there. This is something I am sure fellow staffers Kampfar and Khlysty would enjoy greatly so if you like stoner and/or doom metal or generally seem to agree with those misanthropic fucks on most musical issues than “Age Eternal” is right up your cracked out, slow-music loving alley.
- Information
- Released: 2007
- Label: Metal Blade Records
- Website: Middian MySpace
- Band
- Mike Scheidt: guitar, vocals
- Will Lindsay: bass, vocals
- Scott Headrick: drums
- Tracklist
- 1. Dreamless Eye
- 2. The Blood of Icons
- 3. Age Eternal
- 4. The Celebrant
- 5. Sink to the Center
