This is the follow-up to one of my favourite albums of all time Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method. That record was simply fanatstic. Bleak, pastoral doom which was both evocative and oddly beautiful. On Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull, Earth haven’t reinvented the wheel but it is still a progression. The pastoral country-gothic ambience that was flirted with on Hex is front and centre on Bees. It’s less bleak than Hex and there’s also a bit more of a prog rock feel to the whole thing and on one track Earth may have become as rock n’ roll as they dare.

It’s a pretty good record. I prefer Hex personally but there is a lot here to love. If Hex is 9/10 then this is and 8.

Here’s a snippet

I like Boris. They’re kind of the ultimate tribute band in some way. Equal parts Melvins, Earth and SunnO))), Boris takes all of the good bits from those bands and non-apologetically rips them off. Now some of you will think that that is a bad thing. Its not. Feedbacker is my favourite record of my favourite Japanese band. It’s a monolithic, sludgey, psychedelic doom-metal opus in five parts. But if I’m being honest I can describe each of its parts by naming the influence in question
Part 1 – Earth

Part 2 – Mogwai

Part 3 – Lightning Bolt

Part 4 – Merzbow

Part 5 – Mogwai

See. Wasn’t that easy. Yes I know Mogwai are a strange comparison. But listen to Part 2 and then follow it with “Take me Somewhere Nice” by Mogwai. You’ll get the connection if you can just imagine power cords on Mogwai’s track. I’ll add one further observation. For a doom record there are bits of this that are pretty close to post rock, and for a post-rock album you’ll never want to bang you head so hard again. The album cover pretty much says it all.

I feel like I should have liked Earth 2 much more than I did. I feel bad, really I do. One of the reasons Earth 2 didn’t work well for me is that it is a pure distillation of doom and while that’s perfectly fine, I’ve been spoilt by the likes of SunnO))) and the innovations they bring to the genre. The other reason may be that I bought Hex first and it’s been a regular on Mr Boo ever since and as you may now have guessed, Hex is a far different (and more satisfying) beast.

Hex also goes to prove my ever increasing hatred of the down load. The artwork with this record is fucking great. The booklet is a sepia-toned collection of photographs from the 19th century depicting the horrors of early frontier life. It is meticulously done and encapsulates the terrifying sadness of what Earth are about to unleash.

Hex is an incredible record. It is doom minus the sludge. A chokingly bleak album yet somehow beautiful at the same time. It’s codeine mixed with a pastoral expanisveness. If you ever want to hear what psychosis-inducing isolation actually sounds like then Hex is the record for you. It has more in common with Mogwai than Slayer but it shows that sometimes, just sometimes, a band can reform after a decade and produce an astonishing and important work .

Every genre has a defining album. The sort of record that every band that followed owed allegience to. Earth 2 in the doom/sludge world is not merely worshipped but holds the malevolent DNA spliced by SunnO)))), Melvins and Boris. Post- Punk had Pink Flag, Shoegazing had Nowhere, New Wave had Parrallel Lines and Doom has Earth 2. I listened to Melvins, SunnO)))) and Boris before I had ever heard Earth 2 and perhaps I did things in the wrong order because Earth 2, to me, just sounds ……. well ……. OK. I mean kudos and all that to Earth for defining a genre but Earth 2 is a bit like early Throbbing Gristle, ground breaking in it’s day but it just hasn’t aged very well. My principal complaint is the production. It’s fucking awful.

For those of you who don’t know, Doom is a genre of metal, which to rip off another review, is “Black Sabbath played very slowly”. Oh and without vocals or drums or any resemblance to their head banging brethren. The huge guitar riffs that define Doom are monstrous. They obliterate all before them before being consumed themselves by the next riff. Its a big sludgy, claustrophobic noise where the idea of “song” is neither present nor relevant. Earth 2 does all of these things really well and listening to this record casts records by SunnO)))) in a totally new light. But to really get the full effect of the Doom sound the production has to be right and on this it is simply not. The recording feels furry and the effect, as a result, blunted. It misses the shear, unrelenting power of those that came after but as the seed that starts one of my favourite genres, Earth 2 is an interesting listen.