Time Signature Trees, grass and... more grass...

Genre: psychedelic drone music

With a band name like Bong you can be pretty sure that you will get some pretty psychedelic music, and, sure enough, Bong is a revered stoner doom band (I've deliberately avoided the "metal"-tag). Mana-Yood-Sushai is their fourth full-length album, but they do also have a host of splits, EPs, live albums, and other releases under their belt.

Mana-Yood-Sushai has around 45 minutes of music on it, distributed among only two songs. Both songs are evolve around the use of a droning note wrapped in various patterns of guitar strumming and slow drum beats. Both tracks are instrumental, very long, and extremely introvert, as it were, and thus you can be absolutely certain, that, if you are a mainstream pop kind of person, you will not be able to appreciate this type of music. Fans of psychedelic music and shoegazer music, on the other hand, can look forward to a journey into the quite simplistic and monotonous musical universe of Bong, which nonetheless is rich in small details and whose dark and oppressive mood is no less than fascinating.

I am not sure it is advisable to actually get stoned while listening to the album, as it might result in a massively depressive bad trip.

If you dig bleak and introvert psychedelic music which is characterized primarily by darkness and heaviness without being metal (because I do not, to be honest, consider this kind of music metal), then the dark journey that is Mana-Yood-Sushai is definitely a trip you should embark on very soon.

(review originally posted at seaoftranquility.org)