OAK- SILENT SPRING CASSETTE (Praire Fire Tapes PF049)

Oak is a new four piece group from Stockholm playing spacey sludge doom stuff.  This is a one sided tape and has some really cool stuff on it. The tapes starts off with The Obligation to Endure, a straightforward DOOM track but a bit rawer than most you hear these days. Vocal is not mixed that high. The long mid-section is a really nice melodic guitar part (no solo), just a nice slow building riff and at the end some sort of other instrument that sounds like that Indian one that BONG uses can be heard. Great Shrines starts with a synth drone stuff and then the eastern theme enters and then fades as the drums just stay steady. realms of the Soil is a really long track that is very BONG inspired and starts with  monster riff but maintaining that Eastern feel from the previous track. It does remind of BONG but it is not nearly as heavy but this track is just as repetitive and lacking in guitar solos just two guitars playing the same heavy stoned doom riff over and over and over… I miss the solos badly but still dig the sound these guys have.  Flip the tape and you start with the long track No Birds Sing. It is a slow quite melodic but still heavy track but going towards a more post rock like vibe but not quite. Still has a dark mysterious edge to it. Towards the end of the track there is a short melodic guitar solo, so at least one of the guitar players can play some lead. Indiscriminately from the Skies is a beautiful, heartfelt guitar piece clearly about the inhuman use of drones to kill people. Obama should for sure be put in front of the Hauge for war crimes but it ain’t gonna happen. Great song. The tape ends with Nature fights back. This is more menacing as the title suggests and a shorter instrumental doom piece. There are only 150 copies of this one, so get it fast.. Cool tape.. I dug it..  Hope we can get these guys down to Heavy Days in Doomtown 2013…

http://www.prairiefiretapes.com/