Part-doom, part-post-punk, part-prog rock, part-Buddhist mantra, Auralayer‘s (Vladimir Doodle – drums, Thomas Powell – guitar and vocals, Jake Williams – bass) debut album, Thousand Petals, is a wild ride and one of the catchiest metal albums of the year.
“The Lake” opens the album with powerful double kick drums from Doodle and enough guitar fuzz from Powell and Williams to knock down a castle wall. It and the following track, “All My Time,” remind me of some of The Sword‘s early tracks with heavy riffs sometimes purposefully overwhelming the vocals. Powell’s solo on “All My Time” soars like a bird of prey swooping down on an unsuspecting mouse. “Christ Antler” roars all the way through, and “Faith to Reason” fakes you out for a moment with a short, soft intro before it unloads with cosmic rock fury. It becomes difficult to determine which of the band members is hitting their instrument the hardest during the chorus. Powell’s vocals sound like he’s shouting them from the top of a wizard’s tower.
“Shelf Black” reveals some of the band’s prog-rock influences and the vocals bring classic Agent Orange records to my mind. They ask us to give peace a chance on “Peacemonger,” but the song is anything but peaceful. It’s more like John Cena-as-the-Peacemaker kind of peace which might involve knocking you through a wall with the power of rock.
You’ll probably want to mosh during “You Walk,” a stomping, romping track that has Doodle clanging cymbals and thumping his kick drums like a happy kid as the song moves out of orbit and straight for the sun. You’ll definitely want to mosh to “Dance to Thrash” from the title alone, and Williams’ heavy bass will turn the floor to lava if you don’t get your ass moving soon. “Monstrum” closes the album with funky, fuzzy bass, a bunch of wild drum fills, and guitar work that sounds like it would be on the playlist of that weird guitar-playing dude in Mad Max: Fury Road.
This is a helluva debut, and I love how their name could be taken two different ways: “Aura Layer,” as in a layer of someone’s aura, or one of the seven chakras (and the album’s title is a reference to the crown chakra after all), or “Aural Layer,” as in a layer of sound – of which there are plenty.
Keep your mind and your chakras open.
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[Thanks to Dave at US / THEM Group.]