A Eulogy For The Damned’s "Red Tide Rising" opens the album. Soothing waves crash for a moment as the track wades in from the sea before Fender tentacles suddenly coil around your ankles and drag you under. The beast takes you down into its lair, to an eldritch world where the hourglasses have no sand.
In this place, Orange Goblin unleashes the brilliance of the best album it has ever released (argue amongst yourself, dopers). "Red Tide Rising" undoubtedly will open their legendary live act from now on. The track is already a staple on heavy metal “radio” outlets, from Shoutcast to SiriusXM.
With Ben Ward's thickly chorused vocals, psychedelia wafts in on the memories of that bud your brother scored before your first Goblin show, yet this really is not stoner metal. All of the tracks have been stripped down to their Terminator skeletons. Indeed, glints of bands past can be seen in the dazzling chrome substructure, from Sabbath, Motorhead and Maiden to Kyuss. What band is not a sum of its mixtapes and borrowed CDs?
This is a centrist statement on what today's heavy metal should sound like at a 3-kegger party. Nihilism gets short shrift, but hedonism shouts in every note. Orange Goblin's "Stand for Something" is expert song craft; wah-wah, poignant solo and riffs melding into one of the two best tracks on A Eulogy For The Damned. The other track, the eponymous "A Eulogy For The Damned" is 7 minutes of exquisite heavy metal that, like the forging of a fine alloy, becomes stronger as it is pounded on the anvil until your hearing goes and the track fades out like a dusty 45.
Orange Goblin seems to play through this album with their chins buried in their chests, plying their mighty Marshalls with white-hot 12AX7 tubes while concentrating on getting the riffature just right. Lyrically, they throw in some villains from Venus stuff and an Angel of Death here and there, but it’s all a passing nod. The album is 110 decibels of party at the ear splitter’s pub.
Orange Goblin's A Eulogy For The Damned (The Rat Scabies Damned?) is a lesson for the lesser ones. This is how to make a solid heavy metal album. It’s how the Chimera roars when it wants everyone to hear.
(released February 14, 2012 on Candlelight Records)
