Problem with Dragons – Permian

 

 

Problem with Dragons – Permian
Self-released – 2026
Metal, Doom, Prog, Sludge, Stoner 
Rated: ****

Releasing, September 11th, the brand new Problem With Dragons album Permian. Founded in the year of our lord 2007, the Easthampton, Massachusetts, first three, now four, have been releasing music since 2012. And we are ashamed to admit we only ever got around to mentioning their Ascendant album from 2019. But this is already their fifth full sized album and it takes their proggy doom and sludgy metal into an entirely new era… 

On Permian, Problem With Dragons sounds even more like a collision between geological weight and cosmic strangeness… The nine tracks feel ancient, primordial and impossibly heavy, yet they also constantly seem to reach beyond the earthly. At its core remains a filthy blend of sludge, stoner and doom. All of the metal variety and driven by huge fuzzed out guitars, lurching grooves and punishing drums. But there’s no glacial movement here, the band rarely stays in one place for too long. Progressive turns, psychedelic haze and eerie atmospheric passages continually distort all the underlying heaviness.

Vocals, more primal cries, throaty growls and clean soaring melodies and almost unsettling monotones. All lending the music the feeling that it could be some forgotten ritual performed at the edge of the universe. The riffs can plod like tectonic plates or spiral almost out of control into hypnotic, spacey excursions. And always, those unexpected shifts, keeping the music deliberately unpredictable. The result feels both prehistoric and extraterrestrial: crushing, murky and organic, but also strange, cerebral and psychedelic. Like the soundtrack to a world before memory, and an earth groaning beneath an unfamiliar sky… 

(Written by JK)

Check out the first two Permian singles now and get ready for the full album to drop on September 11th!



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