Article By: Pat ‘Riot’ Whitaker ‡ Edited By: Leanne Ridgeway
The providers of slow-churning, psychedelic dirges of Swedish doom, Alastor, return with their 2-track ‘Blood On Satan’s Claw‘ EP. It’s dropping via the Ljudkassett label on cassette and digital formats on November 15.
The EP was recorded by Magnus Sörensen at KulturVerkstan, Tingsryd then mixed and mastered by Joona Hassinen at Studio Underjord, Norrköping. The Alastor crew, Lucy Ferian, Levi Athan, Ruby, and Terry Fying, offer up two songs, the all-original title track, and one very interesting cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising“.
The original, “Blood On Satan’s Claw“, comes on like a slow-moving plague of hellishly heavy proportions. The lysergic, wall-of-sound dirge proceeds to rattle your bones with wave after wave of horRIFFic guitars, organs, and ethereal vocals. Haunting lyrics, with purposeful references that could be easily connected to the 1971 occult movie that shares this same title, swirl about. Otherworldly and utterly powerful, the song is a fantastic ascent into an unseen sonic realm of true doom content.
Even slower and more gradual is the rollout of the reinterpretation of the CCR classic, “Bad Moon Rising“. Also powered by the same crushing density as its predecessor, there’s a much more lamenting aspect present here. Hazy, heady vocal emissions of the original’s well-known lyrics as the sluggish ooze of fuzzy guitars and meted-out drums grind it out.
You can hear the ‘Blood On Satan’s Claw‘ EP and check out the re-tooling of the 1969 CCR classic now via the mind-melting video from Gryphus Visuals below. Meanwhile, Alastor has once again risen above and beyond the pale to present us the finest in psychedelic doom music.
These two cuts of pure downtrodden bliss, with a total running time nearly twenty-one minutes long, provide an aural experience second to none. Pre-order / purchase the EP at this location.
