Friday, October 22, 2010

The Atlas Moth - "The One Amongst The Weed Fields" (2010) [Candlelight Records]



The Atlas Moth is a Chicago-based band, who over the past few years have really stormed the underground metal scene. With only an EP and full-length under their belts, they managed to catch the attention of Candlelight Records and a ton of new listeners with their incessant touring and unique mixture of doom, sludge, psychedelic and post-metal sounds. This new EP is a collection of cover songs, refined and shot through the kaleidoscope of The Atlas Moth stylistic tendencies.

Featuring cover songs from The Doors, The Mommas & Papas, Failure and Pink Floyd, The Atlas Moth have done one heck of a job injecting enough of their sound into these covers to make them incredibly unique. While many cover albums come off as lackluster and pointless, The Atlas Moth have really combated that to make the journey worthwhile. Each song still retains enough of its original properties to resemble its original incarnation, but is channeled through the scope of heavily down-tuned guitars, howled vocals, plodding drums and dense atmospherics.

The production is raw but clear, creating a harrowing, cloudy atmosphere that really lends itself to transforming these cover songs into borderline Atlas Moth originals. The artwork on this release is golden, a parody of the Metallica 'Garage Days' cover, rife with blank stares and pot smoking, heck, they even made their logo remarkably close to the Metallica one as well.

This is a fun EP to listen to and is done remarkably well. Kudos to these guys for not falling into the cover album trap of creating a release purely for money and/or out of complete boredom, also for not butchering the crap out of the songs. I for one am very much looking forward to their next release, whenever that is. Do yourself a favor and check these guys out the next time they are in your town, I can assure you that it is totally worth the time and money invested.

-E.

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