Capricorn

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With an evil-looking goat’s head gracing the album cover, it’s no surprise that San Francisco heavy doom-rock band Orchid’s 2011 album <i>Capricorn</i> opens with weighty riffage and heavily reverberated, high-pitched vocals that sound more like Pentagram than Witchcraft’s admirable attempts. “Eyes Behind the Wall” opens on an early Sabbath blueprint — guitarist Mark Thomas Baker plays like he was schooled by Tony Iommi, especially in the solo (which is comparable to the epic bridge on “Into the Void” from 1971’s <i>Master of Reality</i>. Although singer Theo Mindell will inevitably garner many a comparison to early Ozzy, his range is actually more dynamic, treading into higher registers on the hard-driving “Black Funeral” than Ozzy could inflect before dipping down into a throaty tenor on the simmering “He Who Walks Alone,” where Baker’s riffs roll into Sleep territory — but where their celebrated 1992 album <i>Holy Mountain</i> recreates a bygone sound, Orchid challenge themselves to reinvent it with strange arrangements and well-crafted songs with memorable melodies.

via Apple Music