The ritualistic nature of Bong’s infinite drone ensures that these crusty-eyed Brits look beyond the known and celebrate the magic and mystery of lives unencumbered by sobriety. You don’t have to be attached to a giant, weed-filled hookah to appreciate something as laudably nebulous and trippy as these two extended, snail’s pace freak-outs, but any self-righteous decrying of this band’s association with recreational drug use deserves to fall on stony ground.
In truth, sometimes the drugs really do work. With clear spiritual links to the expansive drug dreams propagated by psychedelic soundscapers Tangerine Dream and Popol Vuh, this noble exercise in slo-mo serenity ebbs and flows for 46 mellifluous minutes, as all notions of worldly stress are jettisoned in favour of foggy-brained ease.
This is transcendental mantra metal, the build-up that paves the way for each shimmering crescendo proving as mesmerising as a hypnotist’s soporific murmurs.
Of course, there’ll be those whose patience will be tested by Bong’s disinterest in straying from the red-eyed path, but if you’re willing to turn off your mind, relax and float down stream, this is a meditative miasma par excellence.
