To their credit, Los Angeles-spawned Ancestors have excelled
at facilitating the marriage of what in some circles may be coined
“vintage” doom (which seems akin to likening grunge bands to classic
rock), to the auditory meditations of sprawling ’70s psychedelic
behemoths like Pink Floyd. For Ancestors, self-dubbed as a “psychedelic
doom-metal ensemble” (as good as any invective to describe the band’s
punishing symphony), there’s less songwriting involved, and heaping
helpings of interplanetary improvisation between the twirling orbs of
the group’s five members.
To their presumed detriment, this wedlock has come at the price of
garnering artistic praise in lieu of tsunami waves of popularity. But
listening to the band’s debut LP, Neptune with Fire, released
this past August on psych-metal label Tee Pee Records, it’s easy to
assume that the scale for which they’re striving doesn’t measure
gold.
The band started as a three-piece project in the summer of 2006,
when Justin Maranga (guitar, vocals), Nick Long (bass, vocals), and
Brandon Pierce (drums) experimented with the concept of combining their
perceptions to cultivate a grandiose soundscape. After adding
Englishman Chico Foley (electronics, “textural incarnations”) and J.
Christopher Watkins (organs), the group’s vision exploded into the
cathartic expressions found on their debut, which consists of only two
songs: “Orcus’ Avarice” and the title track, both soaring well over the
15-minute mark, which tells a tale of a metaphorical character and his
“cosmic, psychological ordeal through war, celebration, remorse, and
revelation.”
Whether you dig on the imagery more than the trippy expansiveness of
Ancestors’ sludge-y opus is hardly important; what remains tantamount
to the band’s essence isn’t in the energy put into deciphering the dual
foci of their craft, but in the daring game of allowing the two to
swirl into the yin and yang of a larger whole. When Maranga screams,
and the tone of crushing chords descends until the bottom drops out,
leaving ample reverberation for the textural palate of Foley’s
electro-rigidity; when you’ve become somewhat hypnotized by the drone
of artistic repetition and find folly in the trappings of lesser forms
of what’s becoming a chic alternative to “vintage” metal, therein lies
the secret of Ancestors. In simple terms: Less talk, more rock.