Released last month by Blood Drunk Records, It’s Bad Sometimes has crawled and clawed its way out of the cerebral womb of local trio Doesin. The album is the group’s first and very much anticipated full-length record and was skillfully recorded in Atlanta’s own War Room Studios by Daniel Burdett Moll and Jared Tuck. The LP was then mixed and mastered at Fort Karate by the wizardry of Randy Garcia, and features brightly debaucherous, psychedelic cover art by Devin Wells. Wells’ images pair nicely with the explosive modalities featured within the music itself. I suggest it’s best to come prepared with mint condition headwear before wading through the all-too-inviting neon and leech-infested sonic depths of It’s Bad Sometimes.
“Cactus Practice,” the first track, lifts the album off like a flying saucer wasting defenseless desert creatures in the wake of its flight. Austin Adkins, the mouth and “thin stringed” airman of Doesin’s interdimensional spacecraft, begs, “You gotta open up! / You gotta open up your head!” which is an honest and fair warning for the journey ahead. The track, like many others interspersed throughout the album, explores the quantum relationships between jazz, funk, metal, psychedelia, post-punk and art rock. It quickly showcases the musicianship of Adkins, bassist Andrew Venet and drummer Tyler Reddick. Together the trio carve crop circles through the extensions of slap bass, progressive guitar riffs, unhinged vocals and unrelenting drum fills that converse with each other effortlessly.
Without paying much attention, one may very mistakenly think of jam band motifs; that is, until Doesin start shifting tempos, distorting time and engineering melodic breakdowns that are clearly guided within a tightly-composed infrastructure. Parts of the album scream influences like Primus, while other parts are reminiscent of post-hardcore like Glassjaw. The album rounds out its diversity of sounds with tracks such as “¡Si!” and “Jinx Blues,” a Son House cover that utilizes open-tuned acoustic slide guitar.
“¡Si!” is an experimental soundscape that acts as an intermission to Doesin’s psychic transitions. Percussively, the track pulses with drums that call to mind Cro-Magnon war and the whimpering calls that echo inside the shaman’s chest of shrunken heads. It feels darkly exotic, as if primitive, twisted pyres were towering above the canopy of the Amazon rainforest. Then, as quickly as it reveals itself, the track melds itself into the next. “Diamond Head” features an immediate recall to the meditative production of “¡Si!” while the following tracks present eloquent, harmonized guitar riffs that are juxtaposed against angular breakdowns that sound like drunken warlords hosting virgin sacrifices. The album then swelters beneath an onslaught of tonal bloodletting that trails all the way through the demonic chanting erected upon the sinister headstone of album closer “He Who Has Horns.”
It’s Bad Sometimes deserves multiple and careful listenings to truly key into its provocative nature that stands as a monolith of sound waves beckoning the celestial bodies of our meek temporal existence to blot themselves out either through implosion or black hole submersion. White-knuckle into hyperspace, loosen your eyelids, and let your ears do the rest.
More Info
Web: doesin.com
Bandcamp: doesin.bandcamp.com
Facebook: @doesin.atl
SoundCloud: @doesin
YouTube: @DoesinBand