April 2025 Feature Release - The Fallen Edition

It's just me and Sonny on the draft for The Fallen feature release nowadays and this month I have heralded my return to the roster with the latest release from husband and wife duo, Year of the Cobra.  Amy and Johanes Barrysmith have returned with their self-titled third album this year and I have found myself giving it a few spins and so thought I would get some new music in the feature section this month.

Feel free to leave us a review or any thoughts on the album if you get chance to pick up on it this month.  As always your opinions are much valued here at Metal Academy.

https://metal.academy/releases/58054

I haven't checked this one out yet Vinny, despite being a big fan since their 2015 debut EP "Black Cobra", so I am looking forward to getting familiar with it this month.

Whilst listening to Year of the Cobra, I found myself debating how difficult it must be to be in a two-piece drum and bass doom combo. I mean there must be a lot of pressure on the bassist to start with. How much do you yield to the temptation to play it like a rhythm guitar, or perhaps go the opposite way and use the bass to create dense atmospheres like Bell Witch? On YotC, Amy manages a bit of both. She carves out some bone-jangling riffs for sure, yet she also gives us enough bottom end to thicken up proceedings nicely on the tamer sections, when the beefier riffs are on the back burner. You can sense the same dilemna with the drums of course. Do they take precedence over the bass or simply play along in support of the four strings? Again, like his wife, Johanes finds a good balance here. As unremarkable as his performance maybe, the presence he brings cannot be underestimated.

Of course, Amy also has responsibility for the vocals. Her dreamy, stoner/psychedelic style works in great contrast to her heavier bass work. The vocal performance on album closer 'Prayer' stands out in particular with its very personal and sentimental traits making for a deeply heartfelt display. It is not often a doom track manages to invoke emotion in me, but I genuinely fought back tears when listening to that song. As the album highlight for me, it is a shame that such beauty is quite isolated here.

With some sense of inevitability perhaps, YotC suffers to a degree of a lack of variation. Tracks such as 'Alone' lose me completely, and no matter how many times I play the record, I cannot tell you how 'Sleep' sounds. Stronger tracks like opener '...Full Sails', 'War Drop' and 'Daemonium' are sufficient to rescue the record from the lower end of the scoring spectrum. Like I said at the top of this review, tough gig this two-piece doom set up and unfortunately it shows here.

3.5/5

As I have said elsewhere, I am quite the fan of the Seattle husband and wife team that are Year of the Cobra, them first catching my ear with their "The Black Sun" EP back in 2015. I have, however, been a bit tardy getting across their latest release, this self-titled full-length being released over a month ago now. YotC play stoner metal with a doomy vibe and a bit of a psychedelic influence. Comprising vocalist and bassist Amy Tung Barrysmith and drummer husband Jon, the pair deliver their stoned-out doomy vibes without the use of six-stringed guitars. The riffs are carried solely by Amy's basslines as are any solo embellishments.

This S/T kicks off with the lead-off single, "Full Sails" which thunders straight out of the blocks with Amy's lumbering and forceful bassline which is then joined by Jon's bludgeoning drums and a second bass riff. As Amy's vocals join the fray we find that not a distant-sounding, shrinking violet, but a strong and powerful version of the ethereal-voiced siren trope that is common within doom metal, sitting somewhere between Windhand's Dorthia Cottrell and Jefferson Airplane's Grace Slick ("White Rabbit" version, not "We Built This City"). This is followed by the more uptempo "War Drop" which is a groovier and more catchy example of the band's sound with a chorus that will keep bouncing around in your head well after the track has finished, despite the ominousness that it portends. By this time you find that you aren't really noticing the lack of six-string riffing, such is the force of the basslines, which not only stands as testament to the duo themselves, but also to producer Matt Bayles who owns and operates Seattle's Red Room Studio and is a veteran producer of bands such as Isis and Mastodon and does a fantastic job here.

"Daemonium" and its uncomfortable lyrics of confrontation of a violent sex offender, is another pounding, pulsing uptempo effort which has an almost punky feel to it and carries forward the momentum generated by "War Drop" into the heart of the album. I have to confess that, despite my evident preference for doom metal, here Year of the Cobra sound much more effective on the quicker-paced material than on the slower stuff. "Alone", which follows "Daemonium", doesn't quite strike the same chord as the previous tracks and feels amost aimless compared to the succinct and driving nature of the early part of the album. "7 Years" picks up pace once more and is another fist-pumping, psych-heavy, stoner workout with a catchy chorus. "The Darkness" is possibly the most interesting track on the album, with it's crawling, serpentine opening bassline enveloping the listener and tightening its coils as Amy turns in a nicely varied vocal performance that positions her well to the top of the list of female doom metal vocalists.

I think it is fair to say that the Seattle duo, despite sitting firmly in the stoner doom camp, have, wittingly or not, picked up some influence from their home city's historical assosciation with grunge and this is nowhere more apparent than on "Sleep" which feels like a downbeat, stonerised version of an Alice in Chains or Soundgarden track. Closing out the album is its longest track, "Prayer" which is a very laid-back sort of track and, to be honest, I found it ended the album on a bit of a low-energy downer that was at odds with the majority of the material on offer and may well send the casual listener away with a slightly distorted memory of what had gone before.

I think it is fair to say that Year of the Cobra inhabit a fairly unique area of stonerdom, with a grungy, punkish attitude to stoner metal that sees them writing some exceedingly groovy and catchy material, whilst still delivering with powerful, bass-heavy thunder some seriously downtuned and fuzz-laden psyched-out trips. I have never seen them perform live, but I suspect they may be one of those bands that attract a quite diverse following. I have not completely made my mind up yet where this S/T ranks in their discography, but it is certainly their most accessible I would suggest and could well see them really start to gain a foothold in the wider world.

4/5