Songs with occult-based themes - check.
A female vocalist in the vein of Grace Slick and Janis Joplin - check.
Tempos that barely get above the pace of a snail on downers - check.
Songs that seem to run their course in 3 to 4 minutes but insist on carrying on for another 5 regardless - check.
Heavily distorted guitars and vocals drowning in psychedelic effects - check.
As you might have guessed by now, High Priest of Saturn play stoner doom in the vein of 'Dopethrone' era Electric Wizard and despite the overwhelming predictable nature of their tunes, do it well. However they use every stonerized metal trick in the book that frankly was already done to death years ago.
This is a typical "turn out the lights, drop acid, smoke copious amounts of weed and it probably sounds amazing kind of album." But what happens if don't have access to such kinds of music enhancements? Well the truth is you may find this album a bit dull. I am not condoning taking drugs to listen to music (you shouldn't have to do that to enjoy any music) but it would certainly help when it comes to a release like this one.
The band released a great demo in 2011 so expectations were pretty high for this album so overall this is a disappointment. There is much to like about this however. There are great riffs and the vocals of 'Merethe Heggset' are engaging at times but songs go on and on and on some more without ever changing pace, direction or atmosphere. There is the addition of organ but again it is used in a frustratingly predictable way and it doesn't enhance the songs much at all. In-fact it tends to kill the atmosphere at times which I am sure was the complete opposite of its original intention. I don't want to dwell on song lengths as really long songs are part of the whole doom metal experience but HPOS just bleed everything to death to the point where a few minutes of this album is all you need to hear. A few minutes into the opening track 'Protean Towers ' and you have heard the entire album as nothing changes.
The band work hard to create a kind of surreal, metaphysical psychedelic doom and on that level, it all works but four songs at over 9 minutes each that don't really progress is a bit ordinary. If this album had of come out 15 years ago, we would be falling over ourselves to sing its praises but it is now 2013 and this kind of doomy product is now officially burned out. Fans who still love repetitive psychedelic doom a-la early Electric Wizard will dig it enough to warrant repeated spins of the disc but if they want to attract a bigger audience than just a small group of stoner-doomsters, they will need to start adding some variation to their songs.......6.5/10.
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