Slomatics – Strontium Fields (Review)

Slomatics are a doom metal band from the UK and this is their seventh album.

They’re heavy, they’re doomy, they’re Slomatics. This is a band that I really, really like. Haven’t heard them? As well as this new record, make sure you check out Future Echo Returns, Canyons, and their splits with Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard/MWWB and Yanomamo.

Strontium Fields brings us 37 minutes of new sludgy doom material. I’ll immediately state that is a very strong album, one which finds Slomatics doubling down on all of their assets. The riffs are bigger and catchier. The synth-driven atmospherics are grander and more immersive. The use of melody is ripe with colour and depth. The vocals drip with feeling and emotion, and take advantage of the vocalist’s expressive clean singing to an increased extent. This is exactly what I wanted from Slomatics, and Strontium Fields is the type of record that exemplifies why they are such a wonderful band.

Slomatics have a talent for building compelling, engaging, and remarkably catchy songs out of mountain-sized riffs and oceans of fuzz. As soon as the first cut Wooden Satellites begins, the band’s synth-enriched heaviness is instantly recognisable and most welcoming. Like all Slomatics releases, the familiar elements are all in place, only arranged into a new shape that’s all Slomatics. Yep, the band know their way around a good tune.

This time, they have pushed themselves even harder than usual though, and there’s an increased progressive feel. You just have to look at a track like Time Capture, with its beautiful spacious, mood-focused, ambience as one such example. I love that Slomatics have both the confidence and skill to create a song like this. There’s not a riff in sight, but it doesn’t matter one bit. I could also point to the Dawnwalker-esque Zodiac Arts Club, which is short and imbued with ethereal progressive rock.

All of the songs are ridiculously well-crafted. Even by this band’s high standards, Strontium Fields feels like a standout record, a watershed moment in the band’s ongoing development. You could pick any song as a favourite, for different reasons each one. I’m especially fond of Wooden Satellites and the aforementioned Time Capture, as well as the gloriously doomy funeral dirge that is Voidians, and the epic closing song With Dark Futures. However, the entire album is top tier stuff throughout.

Holy crap, this is a good one. Slomatics seem particularly inspired this time, and Strontium Fields is an album that’s just stunning. It’s as simple as that, really. I knew that, barring disaster, the new Slomatics would be good, great even, but Strontium Fields is something else. It’s hard to know exactly where I’d place it in their discography yet, but I’m pretty sure it would be very close to the top. It’s certainly some of their best work, and I can’t wait to get to know it even more as the months and years tumble by.

Essential listening for any fan of doom.