Hailing from Austin, Texas, Canyon of The Skull are a stoner doom two piece, featuring Adrian Voorhies (anyone else think this is a kickass surname? Maybe he plays in a hockey mask…) on drums and Erik Ogershok on guitar. This self-titled and self-released EP features two songs, clocking in at just under 40 minutes and remaining purely instrumental for the entire duration.
‘The Path (of Bear and Wolf)’ is a 17-minute chug-a-thon of ‘tune low, play slow’ that lays out the basic blueprint for your stereotypical desert rock track (think of a gear that Elder or Bongzilla would happily hit mid-song and ride out for five minutes). It’s pretty bog-standard, its problem is that it doesn’t really go anywhere; there’s no hooks, no chorus, nothing. It starts, it ends. That’s it. It feels like half a song. This could really be improved with a big, fuzzy bass line and song killer vocals to back it up – an occasional change in pace would be nice too.
‘Canyon of The Skull’ (band name, EP name, song name – bit gratuitous, no?) is more of the same, however, this time instead of sounding like the blueprint for a song, it’s more of an 18-minute outro – something you’d expect Bongripper or Graves at Sea to finish a song with, except they would be much more concise about it.
Overall, this is by no means a bad EP, it just lacks in any real creativity, neither Adrian or Erik are bringing anything new to the table and both tracks could really use some meat on their bones. Not bad for a first effort, but it feels unfinished. In trying to set themselves apart from the rest of the stoner rock crowd by heading down the instrumental route, they’ve robbed themselves of the chance to shine. There’s real potential here and it will be interesting to see how they develop their sound on a full length – some bass guitar would be nice!
(5/10 Angela Davey)
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