Zoroaster - Matador (2010) [Terminal Doom] // Grade: B+

Atlanta doom metal rockers Zoroaster’s newest album, Matador doesn’t do much to cloak their experimental nature. From the first highly-acclaimed self-titled LP to Dog Magic, which was in my opinion, highly-crappy and to their 2009 release, Voice of Saturn, the band has grown from within and found their inner sanctum.

As if that album cover doesn’t allude to this fact enough: the band has gone a bit psychedelic in the past year. Much like their work before, Zoroaster’s sound is filled with slowly-droning intros and unlike their last album, which was clearly defined as southern doom, the riffs of guitarist Will Fiore takes the listener down the rabbit hole into a hazy place filled with psych rock riffs. Throughout most of the album, these trippy moments wonder aimlessly around, track by track, never really stumbling upon any significant moments.

This is incredibly evident in the opener, “D.N.R.” which threw me for a total curve ball when I first listened to it. The older sound does resurface in the second track, “Ancient Ones”, a bender of sludgy guitars and reverb often laden with synth and psych elements. Take a trip with “Odyssey”, one of the most somber tracks on Matador. A great deal of the album almost sounds like a new band but there are moments of intensity.

It’s not until one of the final tracks on Matador that we’re given a taste of said intensity. In the blackened doom track, “Black Hole”, the band revisits their bone-chilling heavy sound. When I first heard “Black Hole”, I got goosebumps. It’s wickedly heavy and in all honesty, I’d rather see the band depart down this path in the future. Experimentation is fine, it helps a band grow and find their new skin. Like a serpent in the woods, sometimes a band sheds the outer layer of scales they’ve outgrown, emerging a new, vibrant beast ready to feed. Now all Zoroaster needs to do is determine what they’ll feed on. The south is hungry for it.