Heads-up: Druganaut ...

Their motto is “Drugs’n’Booze’n’Girls’n’Doom” and their name hints to Black Mountain. But they have dope in their veins and fire in their amps and they come from the northern foggy and chilly counties of Great Britain. Many thanks to the cool folks out at Sludgelord for having turned me to innumerable cool bands and, among the many, to Druganaut, powerful unsigned band from Newcastle upon Tyne. Druganaut are heavily tattoed Craig Relf on wild vocals, Kyle Partridge and Adam Sherriff on guitars, William Baxter on bass and James Ware on drums.

Their story: “Some bastards out there are on the march to wreck and ruin by experimenting with every drug a cheap and nasty city like Newcastle upon Tyne has to offer. Others try and dampen the tedium of living in this ugly city by playing in a loud and nasty metal band. Druganaut are doing both.”  F**k yeaaaah!  Just roll a fat one ready, go and listen to tunes out at Soundcloud. Let your head bang, your booty shake, your t-shirt drench in sweat and your beard and moustache grow to Druganaut’s doped and alcoholic, heavily distorted, no-prisoners boiling hot blues / stoner-doom metal charge. Because, these Brits play “… blues for anyone who likes their blues to be brown and burning in a tea spoon” and “… metal for folk who want their metal to crumble from the heat of a lighter into a joint”.  Growling, fuzz- and groove-drenched guitar riffs, molasse-heavy bass, pounding drumming and those deep, powerful, gritty, incredible vocal parts by Craig (and, I guess, by some anothe band mate when double vocals are heard). Anyway Craig’s voice has a wide range spanning between seducing, manly Clutch-like deep blues singing; and raucous alcoholic retro-southern tones like those I enjoyed so much in US band Skrogg one year ago; or even wild bestial roars like Phil Anselmo’s when he is really really angry, and more. Great singer indeed.

Druganaut’s music is multishaded like their singer’s tones. There’s “trve” sabbathian doom with slow tempo and downtuned gurgling riffs depicting smoke-dark moments, there is that sweaty, beer- and whiskey-stinking, dusty southern-fried metal and swampy doped metal, be it either on the fiercely sludgy/doom or on the stoner edge, in the holy name of Down, Crowbar, Orange Goblin, etc., And loads of retro hard blues / biker rock too. Druganaut have two badass EP releases in their CV, i.e., Shake Your Bones (2011) and Assemble (2012) shared on Soundcloud. Eight tracks altogether that fully display the firepower of this band. Some of these tracks have been played several times in my own radio shows out at Core of Destruction Radio last year. Ask the band for getting hold of their kickass stuff, they are friendly blokesAs with the worst dopes, when you start with these tunes, you’ll crave for more! But, as anticipated by Steve out at Sludgelord and reported on the band’s facebook page, new heavy stuff, actually a full-length album (wow!), is in preparation. For the purpose the band has been obviously looking for “virgins to sacrifice to the dark lord in return for a record deal”! In the meantime this bunch of hard addicts have been doing much crushing live activity during the past year. But don’t ever believe to a track title running like “Sober Again”. So get hold of them fast, or, as they like to recommend on the bio on Facebook, “come catch them live before they all overdose and die”!!! Aaaargh, nooooo!!!!!

(Hysterical and bearded) words: Marilena Moroni

Facebook
SoundCloud



Druganaut "Equestrian dreams"



DRUGANAUT : OL' RED LIVE @ THE OFFICE, SOUTH SHIELDS, UK, 18.02.2012