Review: Menin “Lord of Pain”

Menin “Lord of Pain”
Doom Stew Records

Here we have three songs which the band put on Bandcamp and calls it EP. Well, I’m too orthodox to use the same term for stuff released like that. But in this case we have with ‘right’ number of tracks to do, at least. Other thing is that they take more than twenty minutes, but since for example “As I Die” takes only something like four minutes less this is acceptable.

However, this quartet comes from Portland, Oregon. Guys decided to create music together not a long time ago, in 2015. It seems that they’re rather creative and cooperative because ‘Lord of Pain’ is their third release. The very first one was ‘Demo’ containing three songs, then there came out one-song “Entheogen”. By the way, way of releasing was the same as in case of the newest one.

MENIN has surely one untypical (not only for Metal, but also for other kinds of music) feather – there’re two drummers in line-up. And this is hearable quite well – maybe not whole the time, but if somebody really listen to the music it’s easy to notice this fact. Both Pete and Devin beat slowly, cadent, rhythmic, but in the same time massive and quite variable – especially as on genre of music presented by Americans. Guitar plays in similar way. There’s nothing complicated in what Chris serve us. But we surely can’t say that this is monotonous or changeless! The truth is that there’re moments when he replay one riff longer time. Very often this is just wah-wah effect. Chris is also responsible here for vocals. They’re also just like they should be in such music – a little harsh, from time to time it provide some psychedelic climate to music. Well, some guitar displays also do it for sure. Ken‘s bass rather typical for music like that – and there’s nothing wrong in that, even contrary!

Anyway, it was always a real mystery for me why some bands use term Stoner/Doom Metal if Stoner Metal is strongly connected with Doom? But this is probably squaring the circle and titting at windmills from my side and this question will be never answered enough. By the way, fans of named above sub-genre of our beloved music should be satisfied after hearing MENIN’s creativity. I’m not an expert on this field, but I think there’s everything what should be in good Stoner Metal here. Some psychedelic and grave climates mixed with each other, raw (somebody could even say: amateur, primitive) sound…. Just check it out by yourselves.