Opium Warlords - Droner album review

Former Reverend Bizarre frontman goes alone in drone

Cover art for Opium Warlords - Droner album

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Throughout Reverend Bizarre’s history, Sami ‘Albert Witchfinder’ Hynninen’s abstract and diehard artistic vision was more or less counterbalanced by Peter Vicar’s more straightforward, classic metal approach. As a pure solo project, Opium Warlords has been Sami’s primary vehicle for his more far-out prospects, yet even if it remains synonymous with ‘out there’ Droner nevertheless might be his most accessible work. With a revealing John Cage quote on the cover, his idiosyncratic definition of what drone music can be has only three solemn tracks clocking in at 20 minutes each, barely any percussion and, for two of them, his trademarked distorted bass leading the way as he rambles about ‘the smoke of the hydrogen cloud of the hydrogen bomb’. It’s like Reverend Bizarre’s final magnum opus, So Long Suckers, covering Sunn O))). Bonkers yet strangely melancholic and appealing.