Taint

Secrets And Lies (Candlelight)
By Martin Popoff

Second record for this Welsh trio, and man, what an impressive pile of large boulders rolling down on your moon roof. If you like your stoner rock crushing, heavy, and hoary, this is for you. Taint (taint stoner and taint sludge and taint hardcore neither) competing with Spice, Spiritual, and Clutch but adding an artful noise element and an Entombed Viking vocal (free band name for you, son). Significant that Alex Newport produces, because there’s that Earache-my-eye punk terror vibe shoving and jostling the listener here. The smarts have gotta come from the fact that the band comes up from a bit of an orphaned non-metal Helmety stream roots – and biz-wise, because the rules of dope-smoked doom are not followed here, just like grunge or the fecund creative period of the Relapse roster as it impressed in the mid-’90s. I suppose that all just means “sludge,” but this is not boring.
(www.candlelightrecordsusa.com)