Earth – Primitive and Deadly

• Country: United States
• Style: Doom metal / Drone
• Label: Southern Lord Records
• Release date: 2 September 2014

After years of slow, twangy desert dream music, Dylan Carlson plugged back in. Primitive and Deadly is the heaviest Earth record in years, and it also has vocals – something the band had done without for a long time.

The vocal tracks are the draw. Mark Lanegan sings on “There Is a Serpent Coming” and “Rooks Across the Gate”, and his gravel-and-whiskey voice sounds like it was always meant to sit over Carlson’s riffs. Rabia Shaheen Qazi of Rose Windows takes “From the Zodiacal Light”, and her more psychedelic delivery gives it a strange, floating quality. The two instrumentals are fine, but “Torn by the Fox of the Crescent Moon” goes on longer than its ideas do.

The bones were recorded at Rancho de la Luna in Joshua Tree, with Randall Dunn adding production and mixing the record, and Adrienne Davies’ drums are as slow and deliberate as ever. It’s a good Earth album. It’s just not a great one, and I miss the space of the last two.

Best tracks:

There Is a Serpent Coming
From the Zodiacal Light
Rooks Across the Gate

Author’s rating: 7.1/10