Review Summary: A journey within your smoke filled internal darkness.
Bison B. C.'s third full-length album, Dark Ages, takes you into the mind of someone who accepts darkness as their reality, struggling to live through the black before it consumes them completely.
Each song is a tale of another internal struggle and it's oppression on one's self, submission, anguish and the normalcy of it all.
The music progresses from fast thrashy riffs to a heavier, sludge laden complement while maintaining the album's original feel and venturing around it's circumference without straying.
The guitar work is intricate and offers variety throughout the album using a low distortion sound and transitioning subliminally from sludge to melody and back.
They've incorporated a few guitar solos in the album and the beauty of them lies in how well they fit in, without sounding out of place but only seeming to be the next step- most notably in the songs 'Stressed Elephant' and 'Die of Devotion'.
Matt Wood's drumming is standard on this album, supporting the songs through their progressions and making their presence felt every now and then.
'Melody, This is for you' opens with a great drumming pattern that, along with low rumbling bass, which builds the song around itself.
Mass Anzai has delivered a pure, heavy bass sound, occasionally building up to suffocating, heavy passages- the end of 'Fear Cave' and the closing of 'Take the next exit'- giving the album the quintessential stoner depth.
One of the most significant elements of this album would be the vocals.James Farwell has flawlessly passed through the various segments of vocals like anguished screams, hoarse and guttural growling and ominous shrieks and presented all these in continuum, perfectly vocalizing the lyrical theme of losing oneself into the cold darkness, escaping into the blissful serenity of alcohol and drugs while still being tormented by flashes of reality.
Dark Ages is a great stoner album, methodical without being mathematical.
The flow of the album in itself could have been better and a few repetitive passages threaten to wreck the moments that the album builds towards but Bison B. C. compensates for it with mostly everything else.
It makes up for a good listening experience, regardless of how many "better" stoner albums are out there, you just shouldn't overlook this one.
