Stoner doom that bangs out six fuzzy and judiciously chimed tracks before the pack on your pipe fizzles out? Unheard of! But here we are kickin’ back a bowl with German husband-wife doom duo Grin. Having both played with the groovy sludge outfit Earth Ship for many albums, these two are well versed in creating high volume, deeply barbed riffs. However, for Grin, they’ve kept the range of sounds even tighter, featuring just one heavily distorted bassline, one haze-blanketed incantation, and one tight and chiming kit. Grin may not play to reinvent the wheel, but they love what they do and crank out reliable mind-altering tones.
But is the twelve minutes that Black Nothingness delivers enough in a style that normally takes just as long to exit one loop enough to get even a little buzz going? Turns out, with smoke-blown riff intros (“Gatekeeper”, “The Tempest of Time”) heavily accented psych-infused drum leads (“Nothingness”, “Talons”), even this little puff of a stoner doom EP can at least be enough for a hypnotic night cap. You can easily hear where, in a different setting, Grin could use “Midnight Blue Sorrow” to set the stage for wild solo hours, or perhaps the hypnotic drone of “The Tempest of Time” to run a long form brain burner. In that sense, cutting these works down to the core of what’s engaging feels slightly underdeveloped; however, the restraint also feels refreshingly gratifying. So yeah, you could go and get lost in one of Grin‘s longer outings, but give this lighter pack a shot—it’s concentrated.
