Review
Seven Sisters Of Sleep
Opium Morals

Think long and hard and decide just what it takes for a band to enter your own personal rarified air (sure this personal status can be mutable over time with bands falling out and joining in depending on how quickly your tastes might change); for me it can be as little as one record and can last an entire “Career” (however long a band continues to release great music) or “forever” even, and it is not always taste that determines my personal echelon because you might hear something out of the blue that you normally would not listen to that you immediately cling to the artist, band, what have you. Then there are those bands that always impress the hell out of you whenever a new record of theirs comes out but then fly under your radar in the lull between releases, and that is precisely where Seven Sisters Of Sleepreside in my mind’s eye; and with Opium Morals, they do it to me again.

While their first self titled album was seemingly a manic crushing slab of monolithic hardcore mixed with a tad bit of doom-y riffing, Seven Sisters Of Sleep go a slightly less “let’s bulldoze over the people listening to our record” methodology and expand their sound with Opium Morals a bit to include more dramatic tempo changes such as in the opening salvo of “Great Plains” (love that dirty bass sound in the beginning) or the appropriately titled "Grindstone” (which mixes things up nicely from a pounding double bass beat to a punk beat to a much slower doom beat to even a metal gallop). The vocal department also features some new sounds as a low-end death metal growl is added to the ferocious screaming / yelling that already works so well for the music, while the guitars still hit all the right spots (check out the awesome guitar parts in “Reaper Christ” do in song or check out the main riff in “White Braid” for evidence).

In my humble opinion, Opium Morals is further proof that Seven Sisters Of Sleep do what they do better than many if not most of their contemporaries at writing and producing records that simply crush listeners with a heavy, dark vibe that not only does not seem forced but rather seems destined to blaze a darkened path that few will tread; the album truly is one more example that this five piece is a force to be reckoned with in heavy music.