Embracing their ingrained power to set in stoney resistance to all as unified cultem de vis insita Melbourne, Australia-based sludge/stoner doom metal quartet GHOSTSMOKER muse upon the uncertain struggle through life and the ever-looming hand of death as they reach a first point of refinement for their sect. As a debut full-length album ‘Inertia Cult‘ is the sort of album that drifts, meanders as it much as it insists upon persevering in familiar space, bringing some light interest to what is otherwise sub-genre music proper, a niche explored through fresh hands. That said the explosive qualities of their sound design, aesthetic and overall presentation ensures the right fandom will be left floored by the nails heavy lunge of every riff and rhythm beneath the rabid hiss directing each sermon.

Ghostsmoker formed as a quartet circa 2021 with a somewhat more extreme, loosely defined sludge/doom metal sound in mind per the earliest efforts from the band (‘Lockdown Sessions‘, 2021) where Grief-level rasps and ‘Dopethrone‘ fattened lilt made for a familiar form of wrathful doom. That sound directly translated into the band’s first official recordings by way of the ‘Grief‘ (2022) EP a fairly unique showing in terms of its finer guitar work and the rare case of a stoner/doom metal guitar tone taken to an extreme without overruling the entirety of their interest otherwise. Calling their music “blackened” or “black/doom” was and still is a total stretch that overlooks sludge metal’s own history but part of their sound does feature a wetter, deeper rasp that’d eventually graduated away from a Burning Witch-esque quack beyond 2023. It’d make more sense to suggest psychedelic doom metal as a secondary sub-genre tag today as we step into ‘Inertia Cult‘ and consider the evolution of their rhythmic interest beyond bounding stoner-sludge doom generica.

Beyond that first EP Ghostsmoker swapped in a new rhythm section, two folks who feature in Kvll including current Holy Serpent drummer Brayden Becher, solidifying the current line-up in 2024 and eventually prompting ‘Inertia Cult‘ with a single in October of that year (see: “Incarnate“). The general evolution of their sound wasn’t yet on display as they’d previewed one of the more venomous, wrathful pieces up front but the boon to their overall production values set the right expectation that this’ll be an album meant to crank loud and zone out with. In fact the psych-doom drift of this album is the other half of the equation and the main reason to stick with it from my perspective.

Think of Sleep inspired treks like Warhorse‘s ‘As Heaven Turns To Ash‘ (sans the southern sludge grooves in hand) in approach of balls-heavy opener “Elogium” where the main riff is all they need to catch ears but the nuclear blanket of a guitar tone certainly helps, setting all aflame to a level that almost butts up against top tier damage like ‘Vænir‘-era Monolord or the first Conan LP. The record starts big n’ mean to say the least and that first impression is miserable (in a good way) yet I’d emphasize the space they’ve left for the composition to burn, hang and writhe a bit within that opener. From that point the album only gets meaner (“Bodies to Shore”) but even then we find psychedelia-tranced horrors further encouraging mental drift ah via the tangent ~3:34 minutes into that second song where the less blunt stretches of rhythmic movement soon become the most memorable parts of the experience. Those smaller tangents are where Ghostsmoker are at their most inventive and all that they do to enhance the atmosphere of this record goes much further toward building distinction than much of the simpler riffcraft on offer.

Whether you’re cooked out of your mind staring at a wall or driving alone down a distended logging road in the middle of the night the creeping waves of the title track (“Inertia Cult”) and its introduction serve as the biggest moment on the record, the most captivatingly set build toward their bulbous and sauntering handle upon the riff. For an album that feels like it was built with only slight variance in pacing for the bulk of its action these bigger moments of reveal and the gnashing sludge voice they’ve given it help to scratch Ghostsmoker‘s name a bit deeper in mind than expected. When things do eventually get hairier and speed up on “Haven” we step closer to where the band started and while the riff sounds pretty amazing with their guitar tone(s) behind it ‘Inertia Cult‘ loses some points with me for not mixing it up in bolder fashion, slumping a bit towards the end.

The best thing that these folks do here on ‘Inertia Cult‘ is tie off the experience by recalling where they’d started on Side A with some of the tripped guitar work on closer “The Death of Solitude”. Though it isn’t a full callback and the album has already worn some of its welcome the ~42 minute spin ends up reasonably rounded in its shape, more of a complete thought than average with consideration for the associated sub-genres. Of course the molten sound of this record counts heavily toward its appeal but I don’t think I’d have given a band named “ghost smoker” such a readied-up chance in the first place if the brilliant album artwork from Adam Burke and the thorny upside-down cross sporting logo hadn’t piqued my interest, or, built expectations that’d been delivered twofold. For a debut LP from a band that’d formed and refitted in the space of just a few years ‘Inertia Cult‘ is exceptional for its quality and curation, although there could be deeper ripples to their rhythmic idealism and frothing nuclear tones I’d still felt that as an introduction to Ghostsmoker this is is an ideal showing. A moderately high recommendation.

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