Place Of Skulls
Nailed

The script is more or less always the same: you spend twenty years or so getting yourself into this kind of trouble with pentagrams and goats on the cover, Satan, the Evil One, sulfur soap, and mongoose aftershave, and in the end, all this stuff becomes boring to you. You start "looking for something deeper", feel the "need to find peace, not just with those around you, but also and especially with yourself", to "put the pieces back together", etc., etc. And so you pull out the old Trouble and Padre Cionfoli records, you cut out with the snow that blinds, and you convince yourself that if God and Doom share the same initial, surely it's because there's a grand divine plan we're all part of, and you want to contribute to its realization!

It so happens that even someone like Victor Griffin (guitarist of the satanic Pentagram), in 1996, had his calling and decided to leave his historic group, relocate to Knoxville, Tennessee, and together with an old acquaintance (Lee Abney, bass from the Death Row days) and someone picked out from a newspaper ad (Tim Tomaselli, drums, never heard of before), decided to give thanks by debuting in 2002 with a great Doom album, but very soul and very blues.

So down with the massive riffs that sound like prayers to the Heavenly Father Iommi ("The Fall"), down with the heavy, stinky blues like the smoke from a ferry boat going down the Mississippi ("Love She Gave Me"), go with the elephant-legged guitars, but Marshall-branded, and therefore more fashionable today than ever, and down with Sabbath, early Pentagram, just a bit less fuzzy, and Spirit Caravan, just a bit less stoned. All well dipped in whiskey, using the rocking chair of some friendly granny armed with a rifle resting on the porch as the metronome (with the only exception of the fast-paced "Feeling Of Dread").

And it doesn't matter if, hearing him talk in interviews, Griffin seems like a door-to-door Bible salesman, and it doesn't matter if reading the lyrics of his songs, we get bored with the story of light, redemption, and the Lord is my shepherd, etc., etc. The result drives me crazy: it's got a lot of punch, groove to sell, and makes your head nod with pleasure. Griffin is a good singer, tormented and suffering, but never a bore (even when he covers "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" - already Campari, already The Animals, already Nina Simone), and an excellent composer. The band has his back admirably, and even if it's nothing truly original, you don't notice it and just enjoy the rock'n roll.

And on the next album, there's even Wino Weinrich to give his blessing! ..letting it slip away would really be a mortal sin..