renkls
Doom metal is an interesting foray into the extreme sides of music. I've always considered it to be highly aversive if you're not willing to meet it on its own demands, and here Black Tar Prophet's debut full length asks quite a bit of you.
One 41 minute 'instrumental' doom metal track, low-fi and with dubious recording quality, Note to Nod is difficult listening for the uninitiated. However, seeing as I am a big fan of long form compositions, especially in the genre of Doom metal, this should be right up my alley. And it is a solid debut, no question. The low recording quality immediately communicates the feeling and tone Black Tar Prophet are going for, and let's just simply say, it's dark and fuzzy and murky.
Whilst the album is instrumental, it takes advantage of many spoken word samples and noise effects to communicate a muddled, yet intriguing collection of messages, of America's social downfall, propaganda, fear mongering and other such interesting samples. There's a lot to keep your focus on the piece, it doesn't have too much trouble keeping your attention.
On the negative side, there is a bit too much repetition, of course, that's a staple of most doom, but here if you go for a few repeat listens, you'll begin to see it's quite tedious when you focus only on the drone-like piece. It ends on an interesting conclusion as well.
Overall, this is a solid debut album, but not a classic. It's always interesting to see bands attempt the one track format, especially as a debut effort, and here it's a pretty effective piece altogether.