Dopethrone are from Hochelaga, the working-class neighbourhood in east Montréal, and they call their sound “slutch”, somewhere between sludge and the kind of street-level griminess that purely atmospheric doom doesn’t usually acknowledge. Broke Sabbath is their most direct statement of this in years. The track titles alone do most of the work: “LIFE KILLS YOU”, “TRUCKSTOP WARLOCK”, “SULTANS OF SIN”. This is not music that wants your sympathy. It wants your neck.
“LIFE KILLS YOU” opens with a riff that announces the album’s register in the first ten seconds: slow, ugly, maximum low-end, the kind of doom that sounds like it was recorded in a basement that has never been cleaned. Vince’s vocals sit between a growl and a yell, which is exactly where they should be for this material. “TRUCKSTOP WARLOCK” is the album’s most memorable track title and delivers on it, mid-tempo, grinding, built on a central riff that keeps paying off.
“A.B.A.C.” and “SHLAGHAMMER” form the album’s heaviest stretch, the latter particularly effective in its simplicity: one riff, extended and varied, until it’s burrowed in deep enough to stay. “SULTANS OF SIN” closes the record as the title suggests, slow, self-satisfied, like something that’s already won.
Recorded to sound like the street it comes from, the production is deliberately rough, the guitar tones filthy and thick, the low end heavy enough to be felt. The mix has the analogue warmth of a band that prefers character over clarity. It’s loud in the way sludge needs to be loud, with the dynamics compressed enough to feel relentless without losing the riff-level detail that makes the individual tracks distinguishable.
Standout tracks: TRUCKSTOP WARLOCK, SHLAGHAMMER, LIFE KILLS YOU
Seven albums in and Dopethrone still sound like no one else, which is exactly as it should be.
