Consistency has been the keystone in positioning the ocean-to-stratosphere rocketed temple of Stockholm, Sweden-based psychedelic doom/sludge metal trio Domkraft who now stand behind a rapidly growing legacy of four polished yet purely hypnotic full-length releases, each album sporting looser-slung confidence and headier climes in escalating stages. Album number four, ‘Sonic Moons‘, rides harder and heavier into the tension-and-release of their work as they drift into increasingly introspective and escapist headspace. Their return is initially all too familiar, hanging its distended guts out up front, yet the patient eared fan will find this album quickly exploring its own unique drift between syncopated worming grooves and spaced hypnosis, to great effect.

Domkraft formed somewhere nearby 2015 heavily influenced by the fluid drift of classic 70’s/80’s space rock, the grooves of 90’s stoner rock and the modern heaviness of sludge/stoner doom metal naming everything from Sleep to Hawkwind as inspiration early on while their sound manifested as something sludge-heavy, driven by huge waves of heavily distorted hypnotic if not fairly simple riffcraft. In terms of style some reasonable references could be made to certain Ufomammut releases as well as contemporaries like Spelljammer and MWWB where some manner of huge guitar sound or sludge-at bass tone lands in a nowadays tiered experience. Since I’d written at length about the band in review of their second LP (‘Flood‘, 2018) and liked that first album even more in hindsight as I’d dove into a review of its follow up (‘Seeds‘, 2021) you’ll find well-established precedence for my reaction to this equally memorable, finely produced/engineered, and slightly more psychedelia-tipped fourth album.

Past records from the band function on the riff, its atmospheric reach and the lumbering force with which they’d build bigger doom metal mountains with and this is still felt as we bump into opener “Whispers” and the tensile girth of the main riff to start before the verses ease and scoot along before leads begin to shape their own spaced focal point beyond the reach of the vocals. It isn’t that we’re leagues beyond ‘Seeds‘ just yet but introducing Domkraft‘s main modus applied to some easier rhythms amidst the expectedly low-slung tunings and effects whipped sound. I’ll go as far as saying it is one of the least interesting pieces on the album as the main riffs are fairly dry, motorik for a 9+ minute song which might lead many folks to believe this’ll be a sleepier record from these guys. In some sense it will be but the far more energetic descent of “Stellar Winds” strikes quicker upon a hotter rush of the stoner metal wheeling we’d not heard as often beyond 2018, making it one of my favorite pieces on the album by default and in good contrast to the push-and-pull of the opener.

The bluesy, jammed and scrabbled-at space rock inspired guitar break just past the second third of “Magnetism” is a fine poke at the brain and the behemoth run-on groove of the main riff on “Slowburner” further prove that this whole psychedelic sludge idea is increasingly viable but from my point of view we’ve barely even breached the best that Domkraft have to offer on this album, the back half is far more successful for my own taste as things take a deeper psychotropic turn and the rhythm section becomes even more focused, intense in order to hold it all together; No doubt the second half of ‘Sonic Moons‘ is where we start to really strike upon the new knack of the band, the loosened shoulders of their riffcraft (or, ease upon the reliance upon big doom metal riffs at all) and the increasingly bass driven rhythmic creep of their work which’d already been evident thus far. The trio’s stray into the increasingly popular realm of stoner-adjacent psychedelia today ultimately upstages their sludge/doom metal side overall on Side B.

“Downpour” gives us a bit more range from vocalist/bassist Martin Wegeland as he’s still feeding into the stoner/sludge pangs but now we get an easier droning voice to match the post-metallic psych’d rush into the piece and the opening/chorus riff that fires off between verses. Though it ends up being a patient walking speed push overall the song amounts to something far more electrically charged than what’d followed “Stellar Winds” otherwise. “Black Moon Rising” likewise builds upon that feeling with more of a screaming psychedelic whirr behind its guitar work as the pace kicks up faster, even beyond the space rock acceleration as the one song here that kinda makes good on that Spacemen 3 influence they’ve long mentioned, granted their work and the main rhythm is still related to their space-case sludge angst all the same. The last three songs on this album, particularly “Downpour” and “The Big Chill” begin to suggest that Domkraft have enacted a bigger point of transformation here on their fourth album, that they’ve somewhere to go with it even if there is no choice but to lean into a pained, sludge metal adjacent feeling which is key to their signature. Many of these aspects were already notable on past releases but this time around they’ve scratched the surface deep enough that it feel like a direction and for my own taste, a good one. A moderately high recommendation.

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