Review by Chris Van Etten for Acrimony - Tumuli Shroomaroom (1997)

This  is the second LP from Welsh band Acrimony. I don't know anything about this band beyond the general information of Discogs and Wikipedia, so I'm just going to talk about the record at face value, which is kind of how I like to approach these things anyway (I do think it's cool that this is pre-Iron Monkey  though). When it comes to Stoner Metal, "Tumuli Shroomaroom" is on the spacier end of the spectrum. This is absolutely music to get high to, sitting in a dorm room illuminated by black lights and and a lava lamp.  It's plenty heavy, but also super chiiilllll. There is some serious wah-wah action on this disc, as well as well a fair amount of droning, and lyrics about aliens and being ancient.  If  any of this sounds disparanging, I honestly don't mean it to be.  I appreciate how thick it is in these regards. Acrimony doesn't work the way a Matt Pike or Wino band would. It's too slick for that, but that's also what's good about it. The production is gorgeous and the bass tone and playing rules (thick and slippery, hee-hee) - I think that's half the reason I gravitate towards this stuff. Vocalist Dorian "Dexter" Walters is probably the MVP in my opinion. He actually reminds me of Paul Di'Anno. Maybe not an exact match, but he has similar skills, if you know what I mean. He makes the songs a lot catchier than I think they would be otherwise. Overall, the music reminds me of Kyuss but more metal, mixed with some of the more accessable Melvins stuff. But again, a lot spacier. Half the  songs are about 5 minutes long and the other half are  about 10 minutes or more. They do drag it out a bit though, past the point of being hypnotic to just overdoing it. However, I'm talking about songs getting boring after 8 minutes but being good up until that point, so that's still a good achievement. There's also the obligatory short acoustic instrumental... I have to admit I'm getting kind of sick of those. So that and that fact it does drag is why "Tumuli Shroomaroon" gets a good but not great grade from me. Whatever. It's growing on me though, so I may have to raise the grade at some point. I also gotta say to their credit, I really can't think of an exact match for Acrimony's sound: the comparisons I made above are fairly general.  I can't think of a band that is this heavy while being simultaneously being so... pleasant? And not unappealingly so.  The title to the song "Heavy Feather" (one of the longer and better tracks) may actually be the best decriptor.