Abel Blood

Abel Blood – Keeping Pace With The Elephants
Self released – 2021
Rock, Metal, Stoner, Doom
Rated: ****

It’s a Name Your Price album over on bandcamp; and it will forever be worth more than you will pay for it. There, we’ve said it. Indeed. And now what? Now, we keep returning to the five-track debut release by New Hampshire three called Abel Blood. It’s called Keeping Pace With The Elephants and its an uncut diamond of stoner and doom metal beauty. The drawling, speaking vocals, leave a big mark on the title track and give it this extra intriguing edge. The same can be said for the funny titled opening track The Day That Moby Died. But it’s not just the sparsely doses vocals that set this release apart. There are also those tiny parks of post punk and almost kraut influences that highlight the otherwise grimy, almost lo-fi rock that is coursing through the veins of Abel Blood. Motifs and riffs seem to translate something forlorn; like a lone figure standing in the rural or urban landscape. Waiting for the sky to fall, the Elephants to pass by and for this stoner noirscape recording to stop tingling the spine. Good, great, almost defiantly majestic! - Stoner HiVe

One does not evoke elephantine images on a heavy record, even on a debut release, if aural largesse isn’t a factor. New Hampshire trio Abel Blood — guitarist/vocalist Adam Joslyn, bassist Ben Cook, drummer Jim DeLuca — are raw in sound on their first EP, Keeping Pace with the Elephants, but the impact with which they land “The Day that Moby Died” at the outset is only encouraging, and to be sure, it’s not the thickest of their wares either. “Enemies” already pushes further, and as centerpiece “UnKnown Variant” would seem to date the effort in advance, it also serves the vital function of moving the EP in a different, more jangly, grungier direction, which is a valuable move with the title cut following behind, its massive cymbals and distorted wash building to a head in time for the nine-minute finale “Fire on the Hillside” to draw together both sides of the approach shown throughout into a parabolically structured jam the middle-placed surge of which passes quickly enough to leave the listener unsure whether it ever happened. They’re messing with you. Dig that. - The Obelisk

TheOutlourdes666 Just saw them live last night! Super unique doom/stoner metal. Catchy and at times groovy riffs are backed up by low heavy bass at times and other times the bass is jumping way up with the guitars to make sick fills that compliment the drummers doomy beats! Reaches far beyond normal stoner and doom to make awesome music that can further be explained by listening to it. -

http://stonerking1.blogspot.com/2023/09/abel-blood-arrival-of-waves-review.html - Desert Phychlist