Liste des groupes Doom Sludge Chimpgrinder Oliver

I’m not sure how this came to be but when I looked up Chimpgrinder in our encyclopedia, the band was labeled Black Doom. So yes, I was expecting bleak vistas played at an excruciatingly slow tempo with shrieking screams piercing my ears every minute or so.

Guess I was wrong. So either the fellow that filled up the band’s page has no clue about what Black Doom is supposed to sound or Chimpgrinder really did change over the years. Thinking back about it, the band’s moniker, the cover art or even the names of the song should have been warning enough that something here smells fishy.

Chimpgrinder indeed play Doom Metal but there are no Black Metal elements in their music. The vocals are something between harsh singing and Death Metal guttural singing, something rather undefined which sometimes will remind some people of Down and at other times growlers from Death Metal acts. The music is somehow more inspired by Stoner Doom bands than anything else and you could probably see some Acrimony and Cathedral here and there. I thought it was very much reminiscent of Canada’s Lavagoat, though the band being a rather minor act would not help most place it on the map.

Here we have 5 solid tracks preceded by some intro which, even though they play nice and smoothly, don’t offer much variation. It seems the band found one method to write songs and are not to keen on displaying much variation from it. This is, to some extent, fine as it’s only one EP and the tracks are reasonably lengthy but it probably would tend to be monotonous on full-length format.

Verdict? Well, hard to say. There isn’t anything wrong with Oliver but nothing really sticks out either which makes for quite the unmemorable play. You’ll probably find yourself playing this once in a while not being able to discern one song from the other and most likely only noticing when the EP finishes. Chimpgrinder must add some diversity to their Stoner Doom because otherwise they’ll just end up being “yet another band”.