Things take a turn for the epic…or the maudlin frame of mind…depending on how you feel about the concept of a group like Crowbar in advance. Before OFR, Crowbar albums were fairly succinct deals - roughly equal parts slow, stumbling, grinding metal, and roughly another equal part tortured, hard core punk, taken at generally faster tempos. But for this album, Windstein begins to embrace the music of his hometown a bit more, calling in Sammy Duet (former of local heroes Acid Bath) on lead guitar, and the music itself stretches out, recalling early 70's arena rock and other, dusty old obscure bands from that era. Yes, you could call it a Down-like album, but not like the first Down record (the NOLA one), but more like the second one, with spacey keyboard sections and sloppy riffs interposed with multiple tangents and changes in tempo. And lest I forget, lots of lyrical references to death and going off into space and finding one's way home and other semi-existential BS like that.
None of this is great in any one particular area, but it all just builds upon itself gradually, until the title track, which is very "Jail" and "Planet Caravan" like, but more organic, somehow. It's just a bizarre, yet dementedly gentle-buzzsaw cry to the Gods, or something, I guess. Even the cover is crazy enough to warrant interest.
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