Bog Bodies are a power trio. That’s the only way to describe them. No other way to put it. Bellowing, bending, and blurring the boundaries between jazz and doom metal the way they do. Both genres searching for transcendence through hitting, and, here, holding, that great holy note.* 

The opening saxophone serenade on their debut eponymous long-player recalls Archie Shepp recording for Paris` BYG / Actuel, but any resemblance to There Is A Balm In Gilead soon becomes lost in big blasts of noise. Feedback, distortion, a wailing wall. The solo screaming, spinning miracle circular breathing, and serrating traditional  / familiar riffs, amidst a salvo of cymbals and snares. The effect, abrasive from the outside, but cathartic once you’re in. The electric six-string shredding throwing angular Marc Ribot shapes. Punk, alien, sinewy surf picking. 

However, around these eruptions are oases of eerie ethereal calm. Ghostly echoes of temple gong tintinnabulations hovering around haunted harmonies. Deep-listening details buried in the sheets of sustained sound. Creating high and hallucinatory, uneasy (David) Lynch-ian-like visionary drifts. Pater Dreamwalk could be a lullaby for Eraserhead`s lady in the radiator. The closing Cave Painting 2019 AD is effectively 11 minutes of ambience. Its psychedelic shimmer sorta Popol Vuh, but made more urban by arcs of twisting metallic tones. Burning, perhaps, in the same beatific blaze as Set Fire To Flames` Signs Reign Rebuilder. 

*The sort of stuff explored in Harry Swords marvelous Monolithic Undertow. 

Bog Bodies is out now, on the marvelous, always adventurous, MIC.