A wonderful side effect of VoS is the ability to tell friends or people of similar interests and tastes about new music. Sometimes we even have specific people in mind when writing. In this case I have a certain Facebook-group in mind. They love Stoner, they love Doom, of course they also love the combination of both which is called Sludge. Thus I give y’all the premiere for “Insomnia”, the new track by Welcome to Holyland!
The roots of Welcome to Holyland lie in a now disbanded group called Zeus Walks the Earth and the new formation has a slightly different, slighty less experimental sound. Their Sludge or Stoner Doom is well-balanced and never seems lopsided, which is important as it must be heavy and distorted but not oversteering in order not to overpower the audience. One might say, it must be more Candlemass and less Kyuss for Candlemass influences the songwriting and Kyuss the soundscape and distortion. With Welcome to Holyland, the later catches your attention, for sure, but the formner keeps you interested. Don’t get me wrong, Welcome to Holyland is surely another Belgian band to follow, because they know how to write songs like “Insomnia” which it keeps the tension of the distortion over its whole, near-8-minute running time and uses little nuances it the dynamics to incite the listener’s wish for more, for yet another riff, another pumping round on the drumkit and another slob of the really powerful growling vocals. The whole record will make you feel welcome without ingratiating itself to the sole judgment of the audience. Welcome to Holyland are self-sufficient and their only judge, and that makes them a wonderful gem in the roster of Consouling Sounds, the label which will release their record on March 24, 2023.
You can pre-order your copy of this mighty slab of heavy sound via Consouling Sounds’ webstore - the wait will be worth your patience, as the whole record is torturingly beautiful and spellbindingly heavy. One simply can’t not listen.
