A Conversation with Eye of Doom

*** This is my 100^th blog post of the year and final one for 2022. The Harbinger will take a break and return on January 9^th, 2023. Happy New Year!!! ***

It’s time for another convo with a band! Let’s travel to Vancouver, Canada to chat with Eye of Doom, a doom metal/prog trio. I recently reviewed their debut LP, The Sapient, a stunning masterpiece of space doom. The album also ranked number 8 on my Top 20 Albums of 2022.

Harbinger of D.O.O.M.: Congratulations on the new album! It felt like a natural progression from your 2020 EP Curse of the Pharaoh. Does it come naturally to Eye of Doom to plan out these concept albums with epic songs as opposed to writing and playing a collection of songs without a particular theme and putting them on an album?

Eye of Doom: Thank you, it was a long time coming! Yes, this stems primarily from what we are influenced by and how we approach music. We have been influenced by a lot of the 70s prog rock and, generally speaking, these artists don’t have many boundaries for song time limits, what genres are mixed, and how they put things together. The biggest factor, when it comes to Curse of the Pharaoh and The Sapient is that these songs were all developed close together, so they all fit similar themes since that was what we were influenced at the time. We can definitely say that the upcoming music draws from new inspirations that are unexplored.

Harbinger of D.O.O.M.: You guys have been together for about five years now, right? How did the band get started and was it always going to be a trio?

Eye of Doom: The band actually started out as a duo (bass and drums) and has had a few changes throughout the years. The first EP Eye of Doom was Alex Kadhim on bass and two sessional players filling in for the guitar and drums. Later on, guitar player Adam Mattsson joined and we started to develop some of the ideas that are on The Sapient.

The last piece of the puzzle, and catalyst to our current sound, was when Derrick Staines joined the band on drums. This accelerated our output and allowed us immense musical freedom, leading to Curse of the Pharaoh and The Sapient being completed. Since the completion of The Sapient, we have parted ways with Adam and have welcomed Sam Beatty on synthesizers. We are developing a new sound which pushes us to a more cinematic experience as opposed to our current riff-based music.

Harbinger of D.O.O.M.: One of the aspects that distinguishes Eye of Doom from other bands is the space rock music, imagery, and lyrics you compose. Do you draw inspiration from films and other mediums?

Eye of Doom: Definitely, there are many things that we draw from for inspiration. One of the most obvious for The Sapient was a comic book, of all things. The story for Eye of Doom Part I and II are based off of the Eye of Doom comic by Basil Wolverton. Set on Venus, this story merges horror with space by narrating the demise of an astronaut who is seeking to rescue his friend. We put our own spin on this story with the music and tried to make the comic come alive.

A comic book is probably one of the most obscure influences that we have drawn from, but where we get our ideas has varied throughout the years and continues to change. Earlier on, horror and occult themes played a big part in what we wrote about and tried to gear our sound towards. For The Sapient, a lot of the lyrics and music drew from astronomy and space travel, with a dark twist. There is a bit of this on Curse of the Pharaoh as well.

Unlike a lot of our space-inspired material, our upcoming music is inspired by more grounded ideas.

Harbinger of D.O.O.M.: What is the music scene like in Vancouver and in and around British Columbia? There seems to be a renaissance of stoner rock and heavy metal across Canada these past couple of years.

Eye of Doom: There are some great bands coming out of Vancouver. Although there aren’t many venues that cater to heavier music here, there are some great venues and promoters. It has been challenging in the last few years to be inspired to book a show considering venues have been suffering financially and the audience has not been able to come out to shows.

Harbinger of D.O.O.M.: Do you enjoy playing live shows again after the hiatus brought on by the pandemic? What are your touring plans, if any?

Eye of Doom: Definitely! We’re hoping to get some live shows soon after we finish some new material. We’d love to get a tour of the West Coast or through Canada some day for sure!

Harbinger of D.O.O.M.: Thank you for your time! Is there anything else you’d like to say to your listeners and the metal/doom community?

Eye of Doom: Thank you for all of the support throughout the years, we appreciate every single one of you!

Eye of Doom’s Official Website

Eye of Doom on Bandcamp

Eye of Doom on Twitter

Eye of Doom on Facebook

Eye of Doom on Instagram

Eye of Doom on YouTube 

Harbinger of D.O.O.M.’s Top 20 Albums of 2022

The time has come to compile a list of my twenty favourite albums and EPs of the year. Last year I wanted to do a Top 10 but there were just too many good albums, so I settled on a Top 13 instead. This year it was impossible to narrow it down to such a small number of albums as I wanted to shine a light on those gems that I listened to all year long. Just a clarification before I begin; these are albums strictly in the Doom/Rock/Metal genres and subgenres and not in music in general. If I went all out in music at large, you’d definitely find Bronswick’s Entre mes insomnies (Synthpop) in my Top 5, as well as Jill Tracy’s Secret Music of Lily Dale (Dark Cabaret), Alison Balsom’s Quiet City (Classical), and Mandy Moore’s In Real Life (Adult Contemporary) in my Top 20.

Also, I’m aware that Sorcery’s Stunt Rock Soundtrack isn’t a 2022 release, but it was re-released this year and I’d never heard of the band before and it turned out to be one of my absolute favourite albums of 2022, so it’s on the list. Same goes for KISS’s Off the Soundboard: Des Moines 1977; it was released this year for the very first time and it’s a fantastic LP, so it belongs on my 2022 list. For each album/EP, you can click on the album title to be taken to my musings/review of said album. In those reviews, you’ll find links to the bands’ Bandcamp pages to purchase their music, if you so desire. So, without further ado, here are my Top 20 Albums of 2022:

20. Indus Valley Kings – Origin

19. Ellefson/Soto – Vacation in the Underworld

18. Cauchemar – Rosa Mystica

17. Titanosaur – No One Home (EP)

16. Stone Axe – Stay of Execution

15. Alunah – Strange Machine

14. Ruby the Hatchet – Fear Is A Cruel Master

13. Raptore – Blackfire

12. Skid Row – The Gang’s All Here

11. Running Maiden – Running Maiden (EP)

10. HAZEMAZE – Blinded by the Wicked

9. Freedom Hawk – Take All You Can

8. Eye of Doom – The Sapient

7. KISS – Off the Soundboard: Live in Des Moines 1977

6. Sorcery – Stunt Rock Soundtrack

5. AAWKS – Heavy on the Cosmic

4. Las Cruces – Cosmic Tears

3. Megadeth – The Sick, the Dying and the Dead

2. Venator – Echoes from the Gutter

1. Metalian – Beyond the Wall

And that’s it for me, folks! I hope you’ll find a couple of gems that you hadn’t heard of or paid enough attention to on this list and that you’ll seek them out. Farewell 2022, I’m ready for 2023! Bring on the music! 

Happy Holidays & Things To Come

I’d like to take a moment to wish all my readers and followers a wonderful Holiday season and magical times with people who are dear to you. May this coming year bring you good health, lots of love, bundles of joy, and much success. It’s been a very hectic year on the blog as I gained a wider following and readership while I tried new things to expand the scope of the Harbinger of D.O.O.M.

Not everything worked unfortunately; a big disappointment for me was the Doom Comes Knocking Bandcamp compilation which didn’t perform anywhere near what I had anticipated in terms of sales despite having a stellar lineup of bands. It sidetracked my plans for the next couple of years as I had hoped to make it a yearly tradition but alas, I shall wait until the Harbinger of D.O.O.M. grows infinitely bigger to curate another compilation in the future. Some of my favourite columns to write are the ones that seem to attract the less views (Audiobook Showcase, for instance), but I will continue to write even more of them in 2023 and hopefully convert some of you into audiobook aficionados (or maybe even to pick up a book and read every now and then).

There will be some changes for 2023 in the direction of the blog. I will focus more on the genres of music I love the most, i.e. traditional heavy metal and old school doom. There will be less content/musings focusing on stoner rock, heavy rock, and heavy psych. Of course, if it’s something I really dig, regardless of genre, I will cover/review it. Bands whose music I’ve reviewed favourably in the past will always have a home for future releases and can count on good old Harbinger to shine a light on them. As usual, there will not be any coverage of death/black/extreme metal in any shape or form.

It’s been an amazing year loaded with phenomenal music—too much music in fact—and we can expect 2023 to only get bigger and better. These are great times to be a rock/doom/metal music fan! It’s an awesome renaissance of the sound from the ‘70s and ‘80s. I’ll have two more posts on the blog before the year is through (my Top 20 Albums of 2022, and one more column a week later) and then I’ll take some time off to return on January 9^th, 2023. It was officially announced that Bandcamp Fridays would be back in 2023, returning on February 3^rd, so that’s always something fun to look forward to. Until then, stay safe and enjoy the tunes! 

Audiobook Showcase: Quentin Tarantino's Cinema Speculation

Quentin Tarantino is a man who needs no introduction. An accomplished director, screenwriter, sometimes actor, and you can now add novelist and author to that list. In June 2021, he published the novelization of his masterpiece, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and it met my high expectations, proving to be a well-written, insightful novel expanding on the film and giving us an alternate ending to boot. I couldn’t wait for QT’s next book and to my great delight, I didn’t have to wait long: on November 1^st, 2022, he gave us the second of his two-book deal with Harper, this time a much-anticipated work of nonfiction.

Cinema Speculation is a unique tome that delves deep into the movies that helped shape Tarantino’s love of film. It focusses mainly on what he considers the greatest decade of filmmaking, the 1970s, and discusses many of his moviegoing experiences as a kid with his mom, going to see double bills, travelling long distances just to catch a showing of a film, and shares his thoughts on why the films he selected to talk about are so important in the grand scheme of things. He goes to great lengths, explaining in detail why movies like Taxi Driver, Rolling Thunder, Rocky, and Dirty Harry, among many others, are still relevant today. He shares some of the conversations he’s had with John Milius, Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, John Flynn, Paul Schrader, and many more legendary Hollywood filmmakers, screenwriters, and producers. Tarantino’s passion for film knows no bounds. If you’re a fan of his and have seen even just a handful of interviews with him, you know how passionate he is about the craft and storytelling—it’s like a religion to him. This book illustrates that times ten! QT is a wealth of knowledge and it’s easy to see that if he hadn’t made it as a director/screenwriter, he would’ve assuredly landed a career as a movie critic or film historian.

Cinema Speculation reads like an exhaustive collection of movie reviews and essays, by way of being part film history, part personal history. Sure, he sometimes comes off as elitist in his harsh views, but the man knows his stuff and can defend any of his opinions brilliantly. The only downside with the audiobook is that we only get Quentin narrating the first and last chapters. This is such a missed opportunity of having him read the entire book. The narrator, Edoardo Ballerini, does a terrific job, but once you start with QT, it’s a hard act to follow and Ballerini can never rise to Tarantino’s level—no one could. Still, don’t let that detract you from picking up the audiobook; it’s one of the very best books on film I’ve ever read/heard. It’s like signing up for a masterclass with Quentin Tarantino. What could be better if you’re a film fan or Tarantino aficionado? I hope QT’s on a roll here and treats us to another book—fiction or nonfiction—very soon. As his filmmaking career winds down, it’d be pretty awesome to have him put out novels and books every other year. He’s as good a writer as he is a filmmaker.

Rating: Five stars out of five

Get your copy on Audible 

Musings: Robot Death Monkey - Intergalactic Party Powder

The beer drinking boys from Edinburgh are back! Robot Death Monkey has been around for well over a decade by now and last week they released their fifth EP, the appropriately-titled Intergalactic Party Powder. It’s the perfect follow-up to last year’s uber fun EP, Druid Odyssey, which I reviewed here. The Scottish quartet brings massive riffs and catchy lyrics on this 4-track, 16-minute EP. As with their previous releases, the album artwork is a beauty and I always appreciate it when bands put some effort into what shapes our very first impression of a record.

RDM just keeps getting better and better over the years. The current lineup has been together since before the release of their Big Pussy album in the summer of 2019. It consists of Shaun Forshaw on vocals and bass, Sam Forshaw on drums, Alan Travers on lead guitar, and Fraser Lough on guitar. We get two instrumentals and two songs. The party kicks off with the groovy “Bantha Rider” and you don’t have to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy it! It’s a superb instrumental that showcases the band’s musicianship. As in their previous albums, RDM infuses their songs with pop culture references and humour. “Asgardian Micro Whitey” references Asgard and is possibly about Thor, and definitely about drinking beer (perhaps even about Thor drinking beer). A soon-to-be classic drinking song with a scorcher of a guitar solo. Next up is the other instrumental on the EP, “Dragon Clit”. All hail the riff! With a title like that, you expect a tune with gigantic riffs and it delivers in spades. I love all the tracks on this EP, but this may very well be my favourite. The party ends with “Kittens and Coke”—not the feline kind and not the Coca-Cola kind either. This song is an anthem of sorts and goes down easy like a six-pack at a frat party. The lyrics are just awesome and out of the two songs, this is my fave.

Raise your pints to Robot Death Monkey! Intergalactic Party Powder is full of sludgy, fuzzy tones, huge riffs, and is a ton of fun. Shaun’s gravelly voice fits the band’s sound to a T. The band has crafted another instant classic set of tunes to accompany you to parties, while you drink beers with your friends, or when you simply need some kick-ass tunes to complement your workout playlist (which is exactly what I did last night and I swear I felt stronger training while listening to this EP). If you enjoy having a few pints with your stoner rock sprinkled with a good dose of heavy rock, then wait no further and get on the booze cruise with RDM.

Robot Death Monkey on Bandcamp: https://robotdeathmonkey.bandcamp.com/music 

Whatever Happened To... Psychedelic Witchcraft

Time for another entry in my series of columns about bands that seem to either vanish off the face of the earth or that we haven’t heard from in a long time. Today I’ll be discussing a psychedelic/occult rock quartet that I love which hails from Italy: Psychedelic Witchcraft. Formed in 2015 and fronted by the lovely and charismatic Virginia Monti, Psychedelic Witchcraft first came to my attention in 2018 via their first LP released in 2016, The Vision, on the Soulseller Records label. I instantly gravitated towards their retro, occult rock blend of music and got their two first EPs repurposed into the 2017 compilation Magick Rites and Spells, also from Soulseller Records. They put out another album that year, Sound of The Wind, through French label Listenable Records. That record had the band playing an edgier, more modern sound while wearing their old school roots on their sleeves. And that was the last album we got from Psychedelic Witchcraft.

They disbanded in 2018, but in the meantime, Virginia went on to front another heavy psych/occult band by the name of Dead Witches and sang on their first album, Ouija, in 2017 before exiting the band before the release of their second album in 2019. She also released a solo 3-song EP in November 2018 titled Neyah, but as far as Psychedelic Witchcraft goes, they were scheduled to get back together in 2020 for a Metal/Stoner/Doom music festival when the pandemic hit but nothing came to fruition. The last post the band has on its Facebook page dates back to October 2020, so it would appear that they’ve disbanded once again. Hopefully we’ll hear from Virginia Monti or the band as a whole sometime in 2023. They were only active for a brief period of time but, man, did they ever shine! In the meantime, if you’ve never heard of Psychedelic Witchcraft and are curious, you can sample their music at the links below and check out this cool video for their song “Rising on the Edge” on YouTube.

Psychedelic Witchcraft on Bandcamp: https://psychedelicwitchcraft.bandcamp.com/music

SoulSeller Records’ Psychedelic Witchcraft BC Page: https://soulsellerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-vision-2

Listenable Records’ Psychedelic Witchcraft BC Page: https://listenable-records.bandcamp.com/album/sound-of-the-wind

Psychedelic Witchcraft on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PsychedelicWitchcraft

Psychedelic Witchcraft on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/psychedelicwitchcraft/ 

Bandcamp Friday Bids Farewell to 2022!

The final Bandcamp Friday of the year is here! By now you know the drill: Bandcamp waives its revenue share and all the money goes directly to the artists and labels for a full 24 hours. For one last time in 2022, here are my top five picks for the occasion.

First off, after close to 40 years in the game, Swedish doom legends Candlemass return with their latest album, Sweet Evil Sun. I’m here to tell you that they haven’t lost a step. You can pick up that bad boy right here.

Second, Canuck doom metal/space rock trio Eye of Doom have released their first LP, The Sapient, and it’s an absolute album of the year contender. You can read my thoughts on it here and grab the album here.

Third, my personal discovery of the month, Running Maiden, put out their first EP, an awesome throwback to the glory days of NWOBHM. You can read what I thought about it here and this is a band to keep an eye on in 2023. Feast your ears on their self-titled debut here.

Fourth, one of my favourite duos of the past five years, VAZUM, recently released a new single with two bonus tracks titled The Precious Ones. As usual, it’s a stellar bunch of songs and you should definitely pick it up over here.

Fifth, to round out my picks, Titanosaur’s fantastic No One Home EP will be landing in our galaxy on December 9^th. You can read my musings about it here and get your copy over here; this one’s a must for your year-end shopping list.

And that’s all she wrote, folks! 2022 has come and is pretty much gone. Dig in and support the bands and labels that have given us another phenomenal year of music. There’s no telling when Bandcamp Friday will return, but if I were to take a guess, I’d say sometime next spring. Until next time, enjoy the music!