Ocean Chief

Halfway between Gothenburg and Stockholm, Mjölby is a small riverside town in southeast Sweden that is now known for doom metal’s Ocean Chief. Unlike neighbours Thy Primordial, the Chief specialise in somewhat psychedelic, Sleep-inspired doom in large, multi-minute chunks. Opener, "Sword Of Justice,” begins with a lumbering bass line for two long minutes before the drums start and the song lurches into a deeply punishing groove that abates only around the nine-minute mark for a quiet Monster Magnet-ic interlude. The 25-minute behemoth "Oden” reprises said formula and drummer/vocalist Tobbe — the few times when he steps up to the mic — sounds not so distantly like Soundgarden/Audioslave front-man Chris Cornell. The relatively short "Gates Of Fire” double-times the beat for the first minute, before slipping back into the sludge of aeons. The rather upbeat, "The Ocean Chief Rules My World,” settles into a jammy piece that tends to bleed into the others, but the band doesn’t mind. Sleep made the hour-long Jerusalem opus, so Ocean Chief are entitled to their monolithic fun, too.