MEGALITH LEVITATION - Acid Doom Rites

Megalith Levitation - Acid Doom Rites

4 songs
76:40 minutes
***** ***
Addicted / Hymns of Apocalypse

Bandpage

Coming from a rather big city in west-central Russia, close to the border of Kazakhstan, Megalith Levitation is a three-piece that’s digging into the deepest depths of all things sludge, doom and drone, with a healthy dose of psychedelia to make the head trip complete. Acid Doom Rites is their debut album, and its four lengthy tracks – none of which is under ten minutes – take up the entire space of a music CD.

The album starts with the sixteen-minute-long Spirit Elixir Drunkard, where the trio shows instantly that they are definitely not speed freaks. The guitar is tuned down to the lowest, the pace is sluggish, the riffs drone, the vocals have a conjuring quality as if we were at a slow-motion black mass. It all feels like early Cathedral, although with even less tempo, and also hints at the drone genre (Sunn O)))...), and really is nothing for the faint-hearted. The following Eternal Trip / The 4th Plateau starts out just as slow, but in the middle of this twenty-five minute behemoth, the guys take a good hit from their bong, and all of a sudden the guitar is clearer in the mix, with some harmonies emphasising the band’s more psychedelic side. The title track is at twelve minutes the shortest piece on the album, and even comes with some spacy keyboards. This is the most accessible track, and does remind me again of early Cathedral. The album ends with the twenty-three-minute-long Smouldering Embers / Pyromagic, another slo-mo tour de force with occasional really strange drum beats. Either this is progressive metal at its slowest, or the drummer is so stoned from the earlier smoked weed that he just can’t keep the rhythm anymore. I can’t make up my mind yet.

As an exercise in extreme slow pace metal, Megalith Levitation make everything right with this truly impressive debut album. It might not be for the masses, and it might help to get a microdose of acid or some good organic weed to enjoy these long tracks to the max. It does take a lot of discipline to play at such an inhumanly sedate pace, but I am certain that there is a niche where such antics will be most welcome.

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