Two years on from their devastating ‘The Head Which Becomes The Skull’ Californian doomsters Daxma (pronounced Dahk-ma) unleash a career best with the ‘Ruins Upon Ruins’ EP. Their first release for Blues Funeral Records, it might look like a stop-gap since it features just two songs but the reality is somewhat different. Each of the featured pieces stretches beyond ten minutes (one even fills a full quarter of an hour), meaning that, combined, the two riff laden offerings actually have a running time that’s almost as long as various rock LPs from the late 60s.
The lead track ‘Minima Moralia’ expands upon previous musical ideas with a fifteen minute epic of slow, space rock inflected mopiness. A hard shimmering chord announces the band’s arrival and slowly repeats over a slow drum beat, quickly dropping the listener into a world of downbeat post-rock. While the main melody is minimalist, it’s far from boring. Thanks to a collection of sampled voices, there’s always the feeling that the track is on the move…and while it might draw closer parallels with a heavy take on Porcupine Tree than the usual Sabbath obsessions, this is a welcome deviation from stoner norms. Introducing a much heavier guitar sound, Daxma’s doomy intents are soon taken somewhere more traditional, but it’s with the next lull that the track truly asserts its greatness. During a slow and almost cinematic passage, the guitars opt for a cleaner sound, allowing an electric violin to take the lead. Doom and stoner gives way to an older gothic influence with traces of Fields of The Nephilim and Paradise Lost jostling with the moodiness of Sleep, presenting Daxma deep in a world of invention and sadness. Eventually adding the strings to a crashier, heavier (semi-)groove, the band really hit their stride and so, the last third of this truly sprawling instrumental affair isn’t shy in allowing Daxmas quieter moods to take the lead. For those who enjoy thoughtful progressive metal and film scores, the marriage of these two styles will surely result in an entirely absorbing listen.
Those looking to hear something truly out of left field will love the EP’s second epic. There’s a theory that suggests if you’re going to cover something, you should truly make it your own and that certainly applies here. Somewhat unexpectedly, Daxma take Fleetwood Mac’s gorgeous, folky pop ditty ‘Landslide’ (already covered by many, and from bands as diametrically opposed as Dixie Chicks and Smashing Pumpkins) and drag it through a harrowing and doom-laden swamp. To begin, the band opts for one of their heavier riffs with guitarists Isaac and Forrest throwing out muddy chords against a cymbal-free drum part. This instantly sets up something fairly uncompromising, but once the vocals arrive, it’s the sheer contrast between the sludgy and angelic that makes the track. Half buried beneath a band cranking a maximum heaviness, Jessica adds an echoing but clean-ish vocal and while there are times where it’s obvious she’s revisiting the old Fleetwood melody, there are others where this song could be anything. When it works, it’s great…but there are a few moments – and this is particularly obvious on the chorus – where she’s trying to make the lyrics fit where they really don’t. Somehow, though – and it might just be sheer wilfulness – it hangs together as a doomy epic, much in the same vein as The White Swan’s total reworking of ‘Jet’. The extended instrumental section is almost a whole track in itself and if it were not clear enough before, the way Isaac and Forrest compliment each other (one laying down a bed of sludge, the other adding clean post-rock leads) is very effective. When tackling a riff that sounds as if it’ll loop forever, such as this, there’s a morose joy in experiencing Daxma reaching peak doom. This Fleetwood cover is the sound of a weird fever dream; of Stevie Nicks’s darker demons scratching through and a great example of how stoner excesses can rise beyond mere generic constraints. Ruby The Hatchet must be absolutely gutted that they hadn’t thought of it first…
‘Ruins Upon Ruins’ is so totally laden with textures and atmospheres, chances are you’ll feel like you’ve experienced a whole album by the time this twin set of crawling riff-monsters reaches their end. That said, for lovers of The White Swan, Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard and other female fronted sludginess, it’s a must hear. Fleetwood Mac will never sound the same again…
July 2019