
Doomster Reich - Blessed Beyond Morality [Old Temple Records - 2022]Blessed Beyond Morality is the fourth full length from Łódź Poland’s Doomster Reich. It features five ten-minute slices of jammed out and sinisterly rough ‘n’ ready dark psych rock come grimly spaced out doom. This five-piece band have been active since 2012, and there are certainly nods towards the likes of Electric Wizard & Ufamammut in their sound. Though with a more loser psych rock/ blues rock feel to their sound, which is underfed by spacy rising synth touches- which suggest a more prime evil-yet-stoned ‘n’ strung-out take on Hawkwind.
We open with the track “Discovering Self Love” it begins with descending & clean bass ‘n’ guitar tones, which certainly have more than a whiff of The Twilight Zone theme about them. Hazy reverb is added, as well subtle organ darts, and the slight bayed & shouted vocals come in, with a more forcefully jammed out vibe coming into play, and I’m getting like an eviller early Pink Floyd jam vibe, which a little later meets gunning ‘n’ chug psych rock. Around the nine-minute mark we go into a great seesawing, rough, ‘n’ ready doom riff which is underfed by spiralling dark synth drifts, and we return to a mix of wonky wavering cleans & moody feedback shreds/ slides as the track floats out.
Track number three is “Wish You Weren’t Here”. It opens with a gloomy dirge of piano clunk, bass thumbs, and building clean guitar weaves. Fairly soon the shouted & strained vocals can be heard, as we rewardingly switch back & forth between a dense dancing gallop & more doom chugs meet dark psych throbs…as the singer bays( I think) ‘When we used to be single Celled’. Before the track drifts into bare bass uneasy & wailing evil blues guitar, before finishing off scoring doom metal chugg.
The album is finished off with a cover of Captain Beefheart’s “Dachau Blues”, and normally I’d say you never try & cover a Beefheart track- but I’ll be damned this really works in its own right. The band turn it into a blend of grimy prime evil blues rock & angular doom slog, for an eleven-and-a-half-minute ride that finishes off the album perfectly.
I must say I was very much taken by Blessed Beyond Morality dark ‘n’ heady brew of psych rock, doom & heavily hazed blues rock. I’d like to give it a three & a half out of five, but as we only do whole marks I’ve gone for a very strong three. To pick up a copy of the album yourself drop by here      Roger Batty
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