Matador - Zoroaster - 2010

Well, that sucked. Zoroaster's Matador was another record I grabbed never having heard a note because a) it was cheap ($5.99 new) and b) its cover, depending upon how you count and classify, has a skull with up to ten horns on it. A quick glance online described this as "psych metal" in the same vein as Melvins, Sabbath and Mastodon (the latter of which, I have learned, basically just means that someone in the band has a big beard). Whatever. I loaded this stinker onto the iPod, took it out for a run and ended up slowing down, sitting down, falling asleep and waking up some 45 minutes later actually farther away from my destination than I was when I stopped. Somehow Matador was so terrible it not only negated my pursuit of physical fitness, it actually set me back in time and space. Not to mention $5.99. 

"dudes...we have so many notes.
and melodies. we need to scale it back.
to, like, two notes.
 and no melodies."  

So what does Matador really sound like?  Sludge. And that's fine, I guess, as that's what they supposedly do. I am no music scholar but somehow even sludge rock has to have some kind of nuance, some kind of progression of changing chords or notes. And metal should convey power - or at least weight. Matador conveys weight in that it sounds like someone too fat to move their hands to that next guitar string or raise their voice made the record. To be fair, there are solos and vocals, I think, but I might have dreamed that part. It's like Floyd at Pompeii felt they were a little too manic and decided to slow it down, chill for twenty years and try again later as a less exciting alternative to Monster Magnet. I know this much. This record makes me hungry for fudge. And not in the way that I have been working hard and deserve it but in the way that I'm eating from boredom and later feel ashamed.

since at least 1984, 93% of albums
 featuring horned skulls have been
awesome 100% of the time.

We deserve more from a band named Zoroaster. We deserve something so leaden and awesome as to rightfully earn its place on the shelf to the right of  any variation of "zombie" and anchor our collection to the floor with supreme heaviosity. Bands named for ancient prophets need not be as dull as ancient prophets. If that's the case, there's not any chance of success for up-and-coming bands like The Ezekiel-Nahum Overdrive. What hurts me most, though, is that the more I read about Zoroaster the more I feel like I must be the one who's wrong as everyone with a blog and their mother seems to "get it" while at the same time pointing out that, if I disagree, I don't. These sons of bitches have at least two other albums out there which means, fuck me, I'm going to have to try again and prove myself wrong. But first a snack. And then a nap. And then another snack.