YOB

A while ago I got my hands on Illusion of Motion, and I gotta say I don't understand the low ratings for the YOB's records on the main site.

Sure, their music is rather inaccessible and the vocals take a while getting used to but they're among the most ambitious and genuinely out-there of the many psychedelic doom metal groups to pop up recently. Their compositions are very long and expansive with some extremely ambitious tension-and-release structures, the lyrics showing a keen insight into esoteric religious traditions too. It's not music that's easy to listen to,  but it feels more like a vast metaphysical journey into the hidden corners of the mind on a more convincing level than many similar groups even attempt to.

They're also nowhere as much a 1970s throwback as usual for psych-doom artists, incorporating quite a few modern influences most notably Neurosis without ever getting as monotonously bleak as that group's lesser material sometimes falls into.

In short, YOB comes across as a band that should be more up most prog-rock fans' sleeves than the vast majority of psych-doom... again, I'm a fan of that kind of metal but much of it falls back on emphasizing atmosphere over songwriting or borrows too much from 1960s/1970s bands for my liking. So, again, why the low ratings?

Edited by Toaster Mantis - June 23 2014 at 03:43

One would think that this website's userbase consists in large part of people who deliberately seek out challenging and not immediately accessible music, though. Sure, YOB's vocalist Mike Scheidt takes a while getting used to.... but so do Jon Anderson and Geddy Lee. Their sound might likewise be rather abrasive and the compositions command a high degree of concentration from the listener... but the same thing applies to much of King Crimson's output.

I've only heard Illusion of Motion in its entirety, supposedly their newer records aren't quite as good being rather shticky in places. Even then, that one album is one of the most interesting in that style I've heard in a long while. I actually imagine that prog-rock fans would take easier to them than metal fans, what with their songs frequently reaching the 20 minute mark and being extremely "slow burn" in approach to narrative songwriting.

Time to resurrect a thread that's laid dormant for months...

The reviews on M-A are way more positive, though, since I imagine psych-rock fans would take more to YOB than metalheads would. Not just the lengthy ambitious multi-section epic space trip songwriting, but also how like stereotypical for stoner doom bands they're more "hippie" than "biker" in their visual aesthetic and lyrical ideology.

In 2002 I was in a bad place with a relationship break up, so didn't have any interest or wanting for anything alternative from this year.