Style: Progressive Death Metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Strapping Young Lad, heavy (and weird) Devin Townsend, Alluvial
Review by: Christopher
Country: UK
Release date: 21 January, 2024
C’mon guys, we’re barely out of January and I’ve already reviewed two bands who got their names by trawling Brainyquote for the musings of twentieth century artists: No Terror in the Bang, named for a Hitchcock epigram, and today I Don’t Do Drugs, I Am Drugs, christened after a witticism from surrealist painter, Salvador Dali. Side note: when I searched for the band’s Bandcamp page I also came across an album called I Don’t Do Drugs, I Just Sweat A Lot which is clearly the best of the three, and, crucially, not a quote—there’s a lesson here.
Anyway, fortunately for the band, we’re here to review music, not band names. I Don’t Do Drugs, I Am Drugs (hereon to be abbreviated as IDDDIAD because that’s a nightmare to keep typing out) is a collaboration between Aberdeenshire multi-instrumentalist Scott Hogg of Cyclops Cataract, who handles all instrumentation and songwriting, and Vancouverite singer Omer Cordell of Trailight. The resulting concoction is a psychedelic strain of progressive death metal with a Strapping Young Lad ear for big production and a wealth of strange synths over the top.
Hogg’s guitar style chugs away with an almost doomy sensibility, bestowing a sense of lumbering dread. He relies on this chugging style a little too heavily, especially on the first two tracks, while the latter two play with more complex riffing. However, the guitars are a mere frame for a combination of harsh and clean vocals with synths and symphonic accompaniment all of which glide over the top, although the mix doesn’t always render these elements as crisply as it needs to. Additionally, Romain Jeuniaux of Omnerod (who were my 2023 AOTY) turns up for a guest spot on “The Terrible Paradox of Self Awareness” and he’s a good fit for the project, IDDDIAD being possessed of an angularity and intensity akin to Omnerod’s, organ pulsating ominously under his contribution.
Unfortunately, the mix lets these intriguing compositions down. The guitars lack necessary bite sounding somewhat muffled, the vocal tracking lacks the finesse to make the most of the harmonies, and the harsh vocals aren’t rendered as brutally as they could be. On the chaotic middle of “The Non-Conformist” the harshes and relentless cymbal smashing should make for an incredible climax but instead blend in an oddly sibilant fashion to create a somewhat hissy listen, while the close of “The Savant on Ketamine” buries the backing vocals and symphonic accompaniment in a way that just feels unfortunate. Compositionally, I’d like Hogg to take some more ambitious swings but the priority has to be sorting these production issues so the good ideas are actually rendered well enough to hear. Oddly, Cordell’s cleans are by far the crispest element here, likely recorded in a far better production suite in Canada and sent over to Hogg.
Psychedelic, intense and shot through with a little weirdness, The Savant on Ketamine is a twenty-five minute trip and a mission statement, too. I’m always attracted to the weirder edges of prog death, and while the ideas on display here have caught my attention, I Don’t Do Drugs, I Am Drugs need to attend to some cleaning up in the production department before taking the project further.
Recommended tracks: The Non-Conformist, The Terrible Paradox of Self-Awareness
You may also like: Omnerod, Trailight, Dissona
Final verdict: 6/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook
Label: Independent
I Don’t Do Drugs, I Am Drugs is:
– Scott Hogg (songwriter, keys, backing vox, guitar, bass)
– Omer Cordell (vocals)
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