Brain Police-Beyond the wasteland

Small Stone
2007

This is the fourth album from Iceland's Brain Police who have been around for about a decade now. It took me about five seconds of listening to this album to realize that this band was another stoner type band who are hugely influenced by Black Sabbath. It seems like almost all bands in this genre tend to draw from that legendary outfit. However that wasn't the end to this album and it took quite a bit longer to piece together the rest of their influences. After listening to the entire disc twice I can hear some definite traces of The Cult mixed in and some Soundgarden as well and the overall effect is somewhat like Kyuss to an extent. Both more so in the vocal department than in the music. The music has the deep, semi slow sludge that Sabbath started, but they lean a little away from the doom aspect at times and opt for a more even flow at certain points. At best they get into some passages that blend well with some rather impressively strong vocals. They also do enough to differ the paces and approaches of most of the tracks. The biggest downside is that unlike Sabbath there aren't too many times where they just peel off riffs out of nowhere. Like a number of bands in this style tend to rely too heavily one or two major riffs per song. With the slower pace that combination can lead to the song being repetitive and running out of steam before the end of the track. That unfortunately happened on a few tracks of this release. It's certainly a good one though and they easily manage a sound that is somehow both and dense and subtle at times. It's far from overwhelming, but undeniably catchy and worth a listen as the Brain Police crank out some raw and dirty rock songs.

http://www.myspace.com/brainpolice