The barren landscape before you is obscured in a thick, pungent haze as the green orb that is the sun climbs the horizon. The earth beneath your feet is charred and oozing, like the flesh on a burn victim’s face. The air is still, but your head buzzes with the terrible knowledge that something cataclysmic has just transpired. Only you can’t remember what it was. The only sound that can be heard is the ringing drone where your eardrums used to be. Are your ears bleeding? Yes. Yes they are.
This is part of the aural experience of Saskatoon’s Shooting Guns’ new album Brotherhood of the Ram. Recorded during the bitter cold of winter in rural Saskatchewan by their buddy Chad Mason, and clocking in with six doom heavy tunes over two sides, Brotherhood picks up where Born to Deal in Magic left off. Just as heavy, but more exploratory of other psychedelic and drone influences than their debut, Brotherhood is sure to cement the band’s reputation as purveyors of some of the finest stoner rock that Canada has to offer. (Independent, shootingguns.ca) Sheldon Birnie