Saturday, October 18, 2008

MOTD - Earth: Early drone with a touch of Nirvana

Mp3 Of The Day



Band/Artist: Earth
Song: Divine and Bright
Album: Demo 1990, Sunn Amps And Smashed Guitars (Live) reissue
Style: early Drone Doom Metal
country/location: Olympia, Washington, US
release: 1990/2001 sorta

There was in fact another show that was unfortunately canceled this week. I was really looking forward to it as well for it would've been three days of metal, but three very different days. One day would've been death metal, the second day would be drone doom metal (with a country tinge), and the third day would be power metal. Unfortunately I only got the power metal (which was awesome btw).

Many of you can probably guess what the second day band was, but for those who don't know, Earth was the band that unfortunately bailed out. This Olympia, Washington based band has long been considered to be the pioneers of the style known as drone doom metal. They took the slow, brooding nature of doom metal and made it even slower and more drawn out. This song is from their 1990 demo which saw them slowly (har har) evolving their sound and style. It's not quite the extraordinary drones that you might associate with the subgenre, in fact there's an almost grunge feel to the distortion and song structure. This might be explained a little bit by the certain novelty of the track. It features the iconic vocals of Kurt Cobain (whether you're a fan of him/Nirvana or not, his voice is pretty recognizable minus all the imitators). Cobain uses his croning like voice over the distorted guitars with sudden bursts of a scream. It might be his influence that gives this song that grungy feel. The need to drone is definitely there, but they had yet to make it a truely droning sound. In any event, the track is an interesting track to listen to. (and you can show off to your friends that you have a drone doom metal track featuring Cobain hehe)

Earth - Divine and Bright

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