Psychic Dose - Myrkviðr: Album Review

Psychic Dose are a doom metal band from Florida whose music typically talks about witches and the occult, aka, typical stuff you see in Florida on a daily basis.

Stoner doom metal is a pretty straight forward genre, and it’s one that I’ve been trying to get into more and more. I guess my problem with doom metal in general is how slow it can be. Call me crazy, but playing two notes every minutes and calling it a song rubs me the wrong way. But when stoner and doom metal do themselves justice, the end result is pretty damn fun. Enter Psychic Dose and Myrkviðr, the doom metal witch band.

The album starts off as many doom records do, with a single chord, some drums, and spooky noises. In this case, “Lycnthropic State” starts off slow for the first 2 minutes or so to create a sense of ominous curiosity. Once Amanda Howell’s vocals kick in the riffs turn very crunchy with some heavy bass and distorted guitars that don’t blow your ears out.

It was at this point I was a bit more optimistic about Myrkviðr. While they don’t necessarily have the energy of a speed metal band, they definitely have more tricks up their sleeve than just repetition and distortion. The songs have a more progressive edge to them, not being overly long and not sticking on one riff for too long. “Maenad” for instance, starts off with what amounts to a crossover thrash intro, before settling down into the doom and gloom stoner rock that was very reminiscent of Type O Negative. Occasionally the energy picks up, and there is some intricate soloing cutting through the wave of sound. Overall the album is musically diverse enough to hold your attention, as long as you can handle the few hiccups the band does have.

Vocalist Amanda Howell tries very hard to have that enticing, almost seductive voice that really cuts through the music to put you into a trance, but it almost never hits as hard as she seems to want it to. She’s not bad, mind you, but she can sometimes sound like she is whispering, with any power in her voice or the lyrics being lost in the midst of the rest of the band. Then there’s her “witch voice” which she just doesn’t pull off. Occasionally, she’ll screech and scratch her voice to create the semblance of a witch, and the result is someone who isn’t very good at voice acting making what she thinks a witch sounds like. It almost would have been beneficial to have a second singer to do the witch voice. That being said, when everything comes together and the music is working with her voice, it can come off as very haunting.

Meanwhile, the album’s mixing is a bit sloppy, with the drums especially sounding like they were recorded underwater. This doesn’t kill the album by any means, but it does occasionally create this wall of sound where no discernible tone can be found. At the same time, when that wall isn’t up, the production is enough to show off the more intricate guitars and groovy bass.

Myrkviðr is a solid record that is marred by a band that hasn’t 100% figured out how to really bring out the best of their talents. But when they’re firing on all cylinders, Psychic Dose is making some pretty entertaining music.

6/10