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***Black Mayonnaise is the one-man bedroom doom project of Akron, Ohio's Mike Duncan. This extremely disturbing music features dying Elephant Man gurgles as vocals mixed with detuned sludge metal guitar and an overall cough syrup spacerock feel. Small-minded folk might call it "depressing," but for slow-mo headbangers and psych freaks alike, it serves as a blessing of beautiful bleakness. The relentless lo-fi drum machine has a profound effect on the overall desolate feel of the album -- the nine-minute "Spherics," for example, begins with a grueling six-minute intro of space gurgles and a S-L-O-W Melvins-like kick/snare pattern, but the payoff is immense: a rush of Sabbath-on-16 guitar flood that runs like a river of mayonnaise. Good things come for those who wait. Full of heavy spaced out drum tracks, low distorted sludge bass and pitchshifted vocals. The mood is deep and very, very dark: the waltz of the sewer rats safely tucked beneath the city streets. --The Kettle Black |
