Album review: Indica Blues – We Are Doomed

When we talk about desert rock, the imagery that traditionally springs to mind is that of the East-Californian expanse, combining the sunbeaten languor of the Sonoran Desert to the south with the edgier cool of the Mojave further north. Despite being based beneath the grey skies of Oxfordshire, Indica Blues’ music’s spiritual home is amongst the nuclear test sites of Nevada and New Mexico, where the already scorched earth was broken and re-shaped in service of mankind’s spiral towards inevitable self-annihilation.

Picking up where they left off with 2018 debut Hymns For A Dying Realm, We Are Doomed pours another two years of global discord and pestilence into the mix for seven tracks that juggle cosmic heaviosity, inky melody and unapologetic nihilism. Rather than providing a soundtrack to which one can crawl under a rock and waiting for the end, however, these songs demand to be stuck on the stereo as you hit the road (or bong) for a trip into the hopeless unknown.

Nine-minute opener Inhale compellingly advocates a chemical escape before tumbling into a brilliant tangle of canyon-deep grooves and squalling guitars. It’s the arrival of the title-track, though, that really tips things over the edge, as snippets of faux-news recordings heralding nuclear Armageddon topple over into the sort of nightmarishly leaden riffs that would do Electric Wizard proud. Continuing the descent, the trippy long shadows of Demagogue deliver their chilling gut check for the post-Donald Trump era. before The End Is Calling dares suggest the apocalypse mightn’t be all that bad after all with jazzy, fuzzed-up verve.

By the time they fall into the cacophonous distortion of closing track Scarred For Life it’s hard not to feel resigned to the fact we’re all utterly, utterly fucked. At the same time, there’s that inescapable compulsion to crack open a beer and bang your head until the fiery end finally arrives.

Verdict: 4/5

For Fans Of: Sleep, Fu Manchu, Karma To Burn

We Are Doomed is released on February 12 via APF Records.

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