Stoner HiVe: Clouds Taste Satanic

zondag 3 maart 2024

Clouds Taste Satanic – 79 A.E.

Clouds Taste Satanic – 79 A.E.
Majestic Mountain Records – 2024
Instrumental, Rock, Prog, Doom, Metal
Rated: *****

There are enough asteroids already discovered that are on a graze course for planet Earth, but none are sure to collide. But impact events have happened in the past and will surely happen in the future. And it will probably be an even faster moving, late discovery that will wipe out most of life on our beautiful planet. If we don’t get to do that ourselves sooner. But before that happens, we are lucky enough to be on this planet at this moment in time, when so much great music is released and it can take some of the stress and pain away from seeing this beautiful planet being wrecked and humanity everywhere going through turmoil and war. Beautiful music. It’s there for you. For instance, the new 79 A.E. album… The Clouds Taste Satanic cats have been showing off their skills, their knowledge and their flair since their first release To Sleep Beyond The Earth from 2014. And ever since that impressive debut release most of their songs and tones have always been in the doom territory and had this ominous or even outright evil character to it. But ever since that first album their sound has also been evolving and using ever more progressive touches. Or even classic and proto rock influences. Perhaps glaringly so on Clouds Covered or their Christmas EP from last December. But for their new 79 A.E. they have gone full prog rock and metal on our souls. There is still that doom touch, how can there not be with Clouds Taste Satanic and especially since 79 A.E. is their soundtrack for the Apocalypse. A world destroyed by an asteroid strike. But for the most part they traverse through a different landscape. The images conjured are violent, full of barren wastes, desolate hills, darkened skies and a sun still blazing above it all like a million atomic bombs. But the music does want to convey more than the saddening knowledge of an earth gone to hell. Even during that worrying and certainly doom touched opening sequence, there’s already a ray of light in the form of the echoing guitar line, a piece of brilliance that gives the listener hope that this tale of woe and despair, might in the end, after forty five minutes have a joyful conclusion. And those moments reappear throughout the two tracks, giving the listener the courage to continue. During Collision, the opening half of the album, they are limited to a few segments. Metal and their almost signature doom sound, takes precedence over everything else and heralds the impact. During the second half called Reclamation they give themselves increasingly over to the prog-rock that we mentioned before. And instead of segueing into moments of light and air like on Collision, they do it the other way around. Darker, doomier moments serrate the composition and divide these twenty minutes of impressive and progressive structuring into build ups, break downs, interludes and give it so much atmosphere and soul, it will surely make you envision mesmerizing landscapes. And I am sure you will experience this grand adventure in a different way. But the outcome remains the same. An even bigger appreciation for their skills, their knowledge and their flair and everything Clouds Taste Satanic.