It ends here. Well, the trilogy telling the tale of spaceship “Albatross” ends here. Albatross is a spaceship that went on a mission: they were to look for other inhabitable planets in our milky way. In the first part of the trilogy the ship travels through a wormhole into another dimension and ends up on a planet inhabited by ancient gods, amongst whom the Green King. In part II the crew escapes the planet and travels back through the wormhole. Things again do not go as planned. The ship crashes on earth and now the crew finds themselves in the far future. Unfortunately they created a rift in the space time continuum allowing the Green King to follow them. In this third and final part, the crew desperately repairs their damaged ship. The goal? To travel back through the rift they created and close it by doing that, traveling onward into the unknown.
Sounds pretty epic right? I think it does. Even though power metal bands have a patent on putting epic tales to music, this story does not fit that mold. No, instead, 10.000 Years are firmly rooted in the stoner genre. These Swedes first came on my radar with the release of II (as you can see, they can come up with an epic story, but fail to come up with equally epic album titles). Its artwork struck a chord and I shared it with you folks as one of the best album covers last year. 10.000 Years need a lot less time than their band name suggests to write and record a new album.
If you think of stoner, you could think of very fuzzed out tunes, with a singer that sounds like he is stoned out of his mind. 10.000 Years are not in that corner. They are more in the High On Fire corner of the stoner-verse. Not exactly the same intensity, but they are very close. Another comparison could be mid-era Corrosion Of Conformity. In short, the kind of stoner that can sound mean too. And at times this band sounds mean. Of course they need to do that, you cannot tell a tale of conflicts and tensions while sounding as if you are in a state of relaxation that can only be achieved with the help of the substances the genre is known for. Opener “Cult Axe” sets the tone for the album and comes out swinging. There is a certain urgency that is present on a lot of songs on the album.
On III a new route is tried on a couple of tracks. The band included more spacey sounding psych rock elements into their sound. “The Secret Of Water” being a prime example. Where this approach makes the biggest impact though is at the ending of “Desert Of Madness”. They jam away and each and every time I listen to this song I am disappointed the song actually ends. This part sounds very addictive and I would not have minded hearing another couple of minutes of this. This extra element also helps with a better pacing of the album (compared to the self-titled debut and II). The more aggressive parts sound much more aggressive because of it.
The weak point of 10.000 Years always was and remains to this day the vocals. They are pretty harsh, which fits the style, but I would have liked a bit more variety in them. As they are now it is a bit too one-dimensional. It stops me from spinning the album multiple times in a row as I grow weary of them over time.
III is the best album 10.000 Years have produced so far. I hope the psychedelic elements will return on a next album and I hope for a bit more variety in the vocal approach. I look forward to the next epic tale by these sci-fi loving stoners!
