Leather Nun America – Buddha Knievel (2015)

Hailing from San Diego, CA, this Stoner/Doom Metal outfit return with another pummeling full-length release titled “Buddha Knievel”. Invoking the likes of EyeHateGod, Crowbar mixed with Pentagram’s vibe, this band delivers eleven tracks of solid music that will satisfy any fan of the genre and will further propagate the power of the riff.

After the trippy prologue, the band presents their full-on Stoner Doom elements in the warm up “Into the Abyss”. The band’s sound is quite organic and natural, with the clean vocals working perfectly well with the nature and pace of their music. Getting fully into the groove, “Warwolf” has that warm and fuzzy vibe of old-school Doom thanks to the pulsating riffs. The melancholic clean passages offer very cool guitar leads and nice instrumentation to change the tempo of the song a few times.

Things turn darker and mellower with brilliant songs like “Bourgeois Pig” and the atmospheric “Gloom”, but its tracks like “Burning Village” and “Priestess” that continue the Doom onslaught. The band manages to craft very unique tracks that flow nicely and never bore the listener, unlike many Stoner/Doom Metal outfits that seem to play the same song forever. This makes this release quite enjoyable from start to finish.

Closing with the entertaining “Irish Steel”, the band leaves us on a high note. One thing that we find kind of odd is the whole Folk Metal inspired packaging of this release; we expected something completely different when we popped this one for review. Overall, “Buddha Knievel” is a pretty solid release with very good songs and a band that shows great potential. If you like Stoner/Doom releases filled with interesting tempo changes and interesting melodic passages thrown into the mix, look no further and pick up a copy of this album.

Label: Nine Records

Release: March 9th, 2015

Genre: Stoner/Doom Metal

Country: USA