I’m going to make a bold statement. The Well‘s debut album, Samsara, came out six years ago and might have changed the course of Texas doom metal, and perhaps doom metal everywhere.
Sure, there have been and still are many fine doom bands putting out excellent records influenced by Black Sabbath, early Pink Floyd, King Diamond, Blue Cheer, and Blue Oyster Cult, but what separates those bands from being great doom bands is that they sometimes forget to ease back a bit on all the “Old Ones from a dark hole in space are going to kill us all” stuff and just groove.
The Well (Lisa Alley – bass and vocals, Ian Graham – guitar and vocals, Jason Sullivan – drums) excel at the former and are off the chain in regards to the latter. Samsara‘s opener, “I Bring the Light,” tells a tale of some sort of magic for about three minutes before it explodes into a jaw-dropping sonic blitz that must’ve made everyone who heard it live for the first time stop dead in their tracks or spit out their Lone Star in disbelief.
“I felt the sun upon my face and began to run,” they sing on “Trespass” – a tale of shamans and encroaching dead things suitable for creating a Dungeons and Dragons game based on its lyrics. Speaking of such lyrics, another quest for your adventuring party could start from the opening ones of “Eternal Well” (“I saw a vision in the swirling mist, the stones are bleeding to the lion’s fist.”). Alley’s bass sounds like the heartbeat of a blood-spattered ogre throughout it. Graham’s riffs on “Refuge” sound simple at first but are deceptively wicked when you pay attention.
“Mortal Bones” begins with a sample of Rod Serling talking about ancient Egyptian temples before Graham’s guitar and Sullivan’s thunderous drum fills hit us like a sandstorm. The groove that kicks in near the three-minute mark is a prime example of what I mentioned in the second paragraph of this review. The Well love to groove and began leading the charge to help doom gets its groove back with this album.
Their cover of Pink Floyd’s “Lucifer Sam” is a fun addition, and is fuzzier than the subject of the song. “Dragon Snort” bellows and roars like some kind of 11 hit dice monster, and the weird breakdown of guitar distortion and feedback is disorienting at first, then hypnotizing, and then shaken by Alley and Sullivan’s anvil-heavy thuds. The closer, “1000 Lies,” dissolves like a melting black candle around the two-minute mark into a smoky trip of Alley’s reverb-heavy vocals, Graham’s oozing guitars, and Sullivan’s hypnotic cymbals and then kicks back into head-banging riffs before you get lost in the fog.
The title of Samsara is fitting for The Well’s first record. “Samsara” is the Sanskrit word for the cycle of death and rebirth. The Well started from the fragments of other bands and was reborn into something new, and it feels like they’re turning doom metal into something new as well.
Keep your mind open.
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