Smote - Songs from the Free House (2025)^{Release ID: 64694}

The “boxes” argument used to come up quite a lot back on the old Terrorizer forum days. Any member trying to conveniently place anything even slightly eclectic into a specific genre, sub-genre, niche, thimble or mere tag usually found themselves suffering the ire of one or more of the regulars on that board. For a forum that was associated with the extreme metal and was billed as the” world’s most dangerous music magazine”, there was a surprisingly open-minded group of regulars present there and as such an album like this month’s The Fallen feature release would have proved to be a divisive discussion point.

Smote don’t have any recognition on Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives. To be honest, I can almost understand why. As much as there is a heavy streak to Songs from the Free House, there is a lot of other elements for the listener to contend with. Drone, psych, folk and doom all occupy the forty-minute space in front of the listener. To my ear this record embraces a very similar sound to that of Wolvserpent, a band who despite my tendency to avoid drone metal, get regular revisits each year. When I pick up such reference points, I do wonder if it is just that Smote have simply not been put forward for submission at The Metal Archives as opposed to being outright rejected. Clearly, these tracks are not always arranged with the heavier elements in sharp focus; the chaos of psych often disrupts any sense of outright doom metal from topping the charts of influences driving the bus. You may easily find then that Songs from the Free House is a little too rarified a listen if there are no albums by Hawkwind in your collection.

At the same time, I do not think that you must be a fan of the output by Sunn O))), Earth or Boris to enjoy this release. The drone elements here possess an atmosphere I have rarely been able to pick up with the above artist’s releases that I have ventured into. The haunting pipes of ‘Chamber’ and those dense, droning keys and vocals create a real sense of immersion around me as I listen. But above all else, in comparison to other albums I have experienced across these multiple genres/sub-genres, there is still a sense of very definite start and end points to tracks. There is no blurring of all tracks into one and as such tracks are permitted a good expanse of individual identity.

I could use the word ‘enchanting’ to describe this record. It has a sultry, brooding appeal to it that lures me in; perhaps at this early stage of listening even without me being able to fully understand why it connects with me so well. There is something primal about the tribal percussion that is on display. The uncertainty of the deep drones and bass lines only seem to add to the allure of proceedings as opposed to alienating me from them. And so, it eventually comes back to the fact that there is no “box” to put this record in, which is sort of why I like it so much.