By Gruesome Greg

Not long after their first album, Passage through Purgatory, was reissued, Black Tusk is back with this, their third full-length release. After a two-minute instro intro, “Bring Me Darkness” opens with a repeated chant of “Six, Six, Six!” Oookay, Glenn Danzig.

What follows are thirty-odd minutes of abrasive, angular sludge metal with some high-pitched vocals recalling Phil Cope. A bit more of a stoner rock vibe on “Ender of All,” albeit not in the vocal department. “Mass Devotion” slows things down for a bit, before building up into a mid-paced pummelling lasting less than three minutes.

The de facto title track “Set the Dial to Your Doom” is more of a winding epic, with some of the best tritone doom riffs the album has to offer, followed by the four-minute instrumental “Resistor,” which expands somewhat on the theme with a chugging, grating guitar riff. From there, Set the Dial crashes, bashes and smashes through another three tunes in the time it takes to set your alarm to 6 AM.

These guys have definitely got the Georgia sound (Kylesa, Baroness, Zoroaster et al), though they mould it into shorter, faster and maybe not quite as loud tunes. (I mean, have you ever seen Zoroaster live!?) Still better than most.

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Set the Dial will be out on October 25th. Pre-order it now here