WARLUNG – The Poison Touch
Release Date: 14th February 2025
Label: Heavy Psych Sounds
Bandcamp
Genre: Stoner, Doom, Heavy Metal, Classic Rock, Psychedelic.
FFO: High on Fire, Truckfighters, Bongzilla, Weedeater, Windhand, Brant Bjork.
Review By: Paul Franklin
If you are looking for any truth behind the cliché that an album should ‘take you on a journey’, then you could do a lot worse than looking at the new album by Texan Occult/Stoner Metallers Warlung.
The Poison Touch is their fifth album, and it’s one that takes the listener on a winding auditory voyage through a constantly evolving sonic landscape, one minute completely enveloped in heavy riffage, the next tripping the ‘psych-fantastic’ accompanied by some impressive dual vocal harmonies.
What makes this album (and the band in general) stand out from the rest of the Stoner/Doom pack is the extra layers they add to their sound. As mentioned, having two people on vocal duties really helps double down on the depth and range of feeling. Additionally, their obvious love of classic metal means that, more often than not, there is always a monstrous NWOBHM style guitar solo straining at the leash, ready to take your face off.
Opener Digital Smoke charges out of the traps and its whirlwind riff and smart dynamics are the ideal start to the album. White Light Seeker has a more laid back, psychedelic, kaleidoscopic groove, with soaring vocals and infectious melodies.
Mourning Devils is a brief, but atmospheric instrumental interlude before Spell Speaker. A swirling, seething idolisation of Sabbath-esque occultism in several movements that, at around the nine-minute mark, nails the definition of epic in every way.
It’s Judas Priest that springs to mind with the chugging, heads down, no nonsense riff that opens the wonderfully titled Rat Bastard (seriously, if you had to invent a metal song could you think of a better combination than Rat Bastard by Warlung?)
The Sleeping Prophet is serenaded against a background of synths and jangly guitars, before Warlung expel their last breaths into the stoner/psych banger 29th Scroll, 6th Verse. A song that is “an interpretation of the Law Giver’s sacred scriptures from The Planet of the Apes lore.” and warns against the destructiveness of human nature.
‘This fabulous blast of heavy will enthral all lovers of The Mighty Riff and then some.’
(4 / 5)
