Maha Sohona – A Dark Place

 

Maha Sohona – A Dark Place
Bonebag Records – 2025
Rock, Stoner, Psych
Rated: ****

We never got around to mentioning their 2021 album Endless Searcher on Stoner HiVe. But luckily, enough followers voted for the album for the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2021. So it ended up on Number 17 that year. But perhaps that Maha Sohona album should have been higher up. And perhaps their new one A Dark Place will?! 

For there’s a storm brewing in the underground, a hum that rattles your ribcage, and somewhere through all that haze, Maha Sohona is steering their mighty ship straight and with intent through the cosmic fog. Turning their new album A Dark Place into a gravitational event. Darker, heavier, more introspective and with even more teeth than their earlier albums, A Dark Place bites and claws its way out of the void. Your pulse with synch with the heartbeat rhythm and you will slowly dissolve into its atmospheric sound. 

And even if the production and mix sound like they could have added a tiny extra bit of oomph, the Swedish trio still sound like the masters they are when it comes to binding chaos and darkness with beauty and weight. Riffs that lurch forward, breathe their otherworldly odor down your neck and topple like tectonically wrecked mountains. Courtesy of those drums that are marking time in a way that sounds earthy and ancient. And whenever A Dark Place lifts, and pulls towards the shimmering infinite in the distance, you will feel that is the tension between falling and flight, smoke and starfire, that the Swedish three have been aiming for. 

Once second track and single Visions hits, you will feel the air around you start to bend, you will swear you can taste the electricity and will be convinced that for a moment, for just a fraction of a second, you’ve met your own reflection on the other side of that sound. With A Dark Place, Maha Sohona have created a threshold, a way to push the books from the bookshelf, it often feels like there’s a message in there from somewhere else. And even though we are uncertain if the three even know it’s there, we are certain that their compositions, all wrapped in starlight and dread, will stand tall for all eternity. And will be waiting, with lantern in hand, to see who is still wandering around in A Dark Place… 

(Written by JK)

You can listen to the sounds from the other side through the first single Visions right now... 

And be ready for the entire alternate Maha Sohona universe when it drops on November 21st! 

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Cavern Deep – Breach

 

 

Cavern Deep – Breach
Bonebag Records – 2023
Metal, Doom, Stoner, Psych
Rated: ****

They have the art of concept art down to an art and tattooed across their heart! Their debut album took you down with them towards the heart of darkness in a deep and perilous mountain, to search out the remnants of a lost civilization. They provided an album long psychedelic video for it a little while after, yes sir, a video 42 minutes long, covering the entire album, journey, and adventure. And now, Cavern Deep is back with the follow-up to that dangerous spelunker adventure. And not just a follow-up, a continuation, the sequel, part two, and it’s called Breach! So, once more… The cavernous doom provided by the three Swedes comes in six tracks and a seventh bonus track. The Attuning single featuring Thomas V Jäger from Monolord was released in December 2022 and actually serves as a bridge between the first album and the new one, acts as the bonus track and serves as a hairpin to start the journey all over again. Which you will undoubtedly do, for the damp and dripping doom, not only paints you a story, and provides the hollowed atmosphere, it also sets the mood and sends the right kind of shivers up your spine. The theatrics involved serve to lift the music up beyond all that’s doom and brings it into the light of something almost symphonic or operatic. Seeing something like this performed in places like Minack Theatre, in Penzance, England would be the dream. A dream with little hope of coming to fruition, I fear. So, for now, you will have to be contend with dreaming the story, which will remain mournful and without much hope as well. And even though through the ending track of The Pulse, with guitar work and keys that seem to let in some light, you will feel some peace come over you. There seems to be nothing left. Music that seems to perfectly translate dissolution. And Breach does that over and over again. The other track featuring Susie McMullan from Brume, Primordial Basin for instance, starts with a definite view over the underground basin, before the terror breaks loose, and rage commences. Both aspects of the story, effortlessly interpreted. Brilliant story, strong compositions, beautiful production, stunning vocals and instrumentation, the band delivered an amazing debut, but grows immeasurably on their second album. Hats off!

(Written by JK)

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