Serpent Throne - The Battle of Old Crow

Okay, so first off, I REALLY like the cover of Serpent Throne's new album "The Battle of Old Crow."

Secondly, I really like everything else about the album, too.

"Old Crow" is pretty much a riff fest from the second one. They're one of those stoner-rocky kind of bands that pretty much live and die by the quality of their riffs. Fortunately for Serpent Throne, the riff-quality is more than enough to carry this record through 10 songs.

I should point out right away, as well, that riff quality matters all the more for Serpent Throne because they're instrumental. Not too many instrumental stoner rock bands out there, but the lack of a vocalist on this record is decidedly not a bad thing. When you consider the fact that the vocals on a lot of records like this are some guy either trying to sound like Ozzy Osbourne and failing or some guy trying to sound like King Buzzo and failing, the lack of a vocalist isn't much of a problem. In fact, I think it gives them a lot of room to really kind of put how epic their riffs are front and center.

Serpent Throne is basically two parts straight ahead fuzzy riff-rock, with well worn riffs and beats, mixed with one part NWOBHM type epic, twin-guitar shredding, and a little dash of Morricone-esque dustiness. It's these last two elements that really set this record apart and push it over the top for me. I love riffs and I'll never knock a band for just piling thick stoner riffs one on top of each other, but Serpent Throen manages to kick it up a notch by giving what they do a kind of gradiosity which is sometimes lost in dirty riff-rock kind of stuff.

Overall, "Old Crow" is a great album to put on and just kind of bob your head to. If you're like me and you like your riffing with a little bit of epic, then I would suggest checking out Serpent Throne. I hope this record comes out on vinyl because I'd prefer to have that nice cover all big and stuff.

Serpent Throne on MySpace