Earth - Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version (1993)

| Drone Metal | Doom Metal |

Earth isn't just the pioneers of Drone metal (a very repetitive and minimalist form of Doom Metal), they are also probably the best band in the whole genre. And all this because of this album. Earth 2 (which is their debut LP) is undoubtedly the heaviest album ever made. Composed by three long tracks and with more than 70min, 2 is an incomparable epic journey. Chords as low-tuned as possible and amplifiers louder than humanly bearable, guitarist and leader Dylan Carlson with bassist Dave Harwell produce probably one of the most repetitive Drone albums (which already says a lot), and at the same time, one of the most intriguing, textured, challenging and labyrinthine. Earth 2 dedicates itself to the proposition that there's no such thing as too loud, trudging, or doom-laden.

Earth 2 starts with the blacksabbath-ish Seven Angels. Even around all the humming chaos that surrounds the record from head to tail, things are still based around riffs (riffs, which, endlessly repeat and flows through the ground). And Seven Angels has the best riffage (if one could call it that) in the album. Massively slow and low-tuned, the guitar and the bass intertwine and reiterate infinitely, as the amps create a dense and tectonic atmosphere. Even the muted chords are powerful enough to blow the speakers and rupture the eardrums. As the record progress, the droning gets louder and the riffs gets longer. Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine takes over with no pause, and crawls the album's longitudeness restlessly. The notes get even more distorted and stretched, until the music becomes sort of ambient-ish. But when you give it attention, for one second even, you simply get helplessly dragged by it. The timeless notes and the eternal fuzz forcefully carries you into the melodic damnation. When you feel like you can't hold it anymore, Like Gold And Faceted comes to finish it. "Finish it", since it is even longer, louder and more powerful and destructive. The riffs now are so slow that even its notes are unrecognisably lacerated, and the impact becomes extended to the eternal pain. The slow-motion massive eruption's heath is solar hot, and yet, feels quietly warm. When you finally gets involved and absorbed by the drone, your mind gets bounded to the amplifier's endless walk. A tectonic and oceanic percussion leads the final way to glory, as the war rages to an end. An end that never seems to come.

Catalog: SP 185b (Sub Pop Records)
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