Doūsk - Live!

Doūsk - Live!
Riff Dealers - 2025
Stoner, Noise Rock
Rated: ****1/4

When you decide your first official release will be a live album, it comes with some hazards you have to cope with. First you fully expose yourself, bringing things back to its pure and naked form. Furthermore we all know that live recordings often tend to sound a bit plain and cheap, forgetting to capture the true spirit and energy of a live concert. Belarusian instrumental duo Doūsk, consisting of drummer Dmitry Vashkov and bass player Igor Shaminsky, knows how to avoid those pitfalls. 'Live!' sounds raw, sweaty and heavy with some kind of delayed energy - as if the punch comes a few seconds after the grooves hit you in the gut. Time and time again. It's exciting and makes you feel like you're standing in the middle of the crowd, being engulfed by a wave after wave of unbridled purity.

Yes, this is desert-style rock like it should be, trimmed down to the bare essence of a duo that's perfectly in sync and knows how to draw you in with catchy melodies and hypnotic patterns. In that regard 'Sludge Dredd' is the perfect start to 35 minutes of calculated mayhem. Luring you in with some subdued drumming and atmospheric sounds produced by the four string, it hits you out of the blue with a larger than life groove. And that isn't the only one. These guys deliver the goods for the full 35 minutes and you can hear and feel the joy seeping out of every pore the entire time, adding various subtleties to prevent things from getting (too) predictable and monotonous. 'Blueprint' and the intro to 'Running on the Roof' add a welcome psychedelic edge. And when they lift the lid of density and open things up a bit, it sounds like a stonerized version of highly underrated Czech noise rockers Deverova Chyba, especially in parts of 'Whiskey Robot Dance' (great title!), 'Running on the Roof' and '5'. Stoner HiVe head honcho Joop Konraad stated about the latter that it "will make you feel like a whirling dervish dancing through a wormhole in space and time". And that can be said of the entire album. This is freedom in its purest form; a brilliant sonic whirlwind of hammering bass and pounding drums that is bound to hypnotize everything and everyone that appears in its wake.

(Written by Ronny Dijksterhuis)

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