Ichabod – 2012 (2009)

With the waves of bands playing Stoner Rock/Metal with Psychedelic influences we have a hard time finding something worth listening to. Ichabod solves this problem for us with 2012, their 3rd full-length album in 11 years of existence. The band does a good job in reminding us what this genre is all about with their grooviness and heaviness.

Hailing from Massachusetts, the band has the traditional American sound of this genre. They also do a great job in capturing the moodiness of stoner rock and making it their own. However, in whenever the band uses clean vocals they sound terrible; the singer really needs to get some lessons before attempting them again. The harsh vocals are good enough for a release of this kind.

There are very unique and interesting musical melodies in this album, like in the song “Gentlemen Of The Coir” that give a great psychedelic feeling. But the crushing riffs are what makes this release very good, and they are diverse enough through the album to not make “2012” a snore-fest (like many Stoner Rock/Metal albums).

“2012” has a great pace that makes this album flow very nicely, the band has surely been working on this in their last releases and now they got it completely right (for the first four songs). But tracks 5 and 6 feel like fillers to us. After these two tracks, the band closes the album strongly with the album title track and then another pointless movie sample outro.

There are many things done right in this album, and the experimentation of the last 4 tracks is not one of them. While this keeps the album original and fresh, it also kills the mood of the music completely, just to pick it up again with the album title song and then kill it once more.

Overall, “2012” is a good release and shows promise for Ichabod. If they can just stay on course and get a better clean singer, they would be one of the best bands of the genre.

Release: November 24th, 2009

Country: USA