Kev Rowland
Formed in California in 2014, this is the second full-length album from the doom/stoner trio. Now, I like doom as much as the next metalhead, and have lots of stoner in my collection, but I can’t get out of my head that this is NWOBHM-tinged doom as opposed to the real thing. Now, back in 1979 I was sweet sixteen, and fell into the genre wholeheartedly but even in the early days it was easy to see what bands were going to make it, what bands might make it, and what bands were probably just going to release one album or single and then vanish, and Beastmaker fall into the last category. They are currently touring with Zakk Sabbath, and I can imagine that they would be a great warm-up band, but never anything more than that.
This is an okay album, but there isn’t enough in the way of good songs for me to want to keep returning to it, and there is a feeling that they have a lot to do if they ever want to break out of the second division.