For all of the brilliant heavy music coming from India these days Djinn and Miskatonic is surely at the top of the doom metal pool. Their debut album back in 2013 ‘Forever in the Realm’ was an earthy, droning tribute to the spaced world of Electric Wizard and Reverend Bizarre in equal measure. The clanging production and tinny distortion of the guitar are resolved on ‘Even Gods Must Die’ and the result is a full hour of haunting world class stoner doom. The thick and almost languishing guitar tone stomps along with a confident, unnerving progress I haven’t heard since ‘Die Healing’. Some of that Finnish Saint Vitus influence pairs this record well with Cardinal’s Folly‘s excellent 2017 album ‘Deranged Pagan Sons’, with similarly growled vocal breaks and chant-like tones in between.

‘Even Gods Must Die’ isn’t all muddy chugs and moaning doom, they’ve explored more stoner metal here and it gives the long playing time of the album some breaks. The 15+ minute opener is a crawl that leads to a barnstorming stoner metal end that is equal parts Acid Witch and Trouble in it’s push to the end. To classify this as death/doom might assume too much but the harsher vocal moments are kind of wild and unexpected considering how carefully the previous album avoided it. As the album progresses I get hints of Seamount (not the vocals, though) and some sludge metal influences sparsely incorporated.

I don’t really get high anymore so an hour long stoner doom record doesn’t always entrance me like it would if I was lit up to high hell; but I will say that it was way easy to get lost in the meandering groove and the spooked-out vocals here. Djinn and Miskatonic impress just as much as better known, long standing bands on songs like “Doombringer” and “Hangman’s Hope” and it’s a shame the world doesn’t have greater exposure to this type of world class heavy metal coming from India.

Eldritch curses and howling terror. 4.0/5.0

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