[Cover design and layout by Toni Raukola]
In a 2012 interview with The Sludgelord, Finland’s Demonic Death Judge — a band that, as our own Spencer Hotz put it, is not, in fact, a Soulsborne mini-boss — described its sound thus: “I think it’s just simply heavy. It sounds real. It’s thick, it’s raw, and it sounds like it’s been done by fat, bearded men with tattoos.” That’s a fine enough descriptor of the stoner/sludge quartet, but in the grand tradition of Finnish acerbic humility, it also sells it short. Over four albums, from 2011’s The Descent, which gave the keynote address at that year’s buzzsaw guitars convention, to 2020’s The Trail, a proggier, more thoughtful entry that could still burn bong resin with the best of them, the band subtly diversified its sound, going from an obvious death metal descendant playing THC-infused sludge to something more well-rounded and intelligently composed.
Absolutely Launched, Demonic Death Judge’s fifth album, says forget all of that. If the album cover, which features a surfer shooting a shotgun during the abandoned X Games event that kickstarted the Great Seagull War, didn’t set expectations, song titles like “90’s Violence” and “Spliffhanger” will. This is nasty, grubby, grungy stuff, not in the genre sense, but in the way grease leaves permanent stains on your clothes. And, per the Suicide Records Bandcamp pitch, Raukola simply spelled it all out: “These riffs reek of blues, petrol, and violence. Absolutely Launched is by far the filthiest record we’ve ever made.”
Demonic Death Judge defends that filthy thesis from the jump with the greasy “90’s Violence,” an appropriately ’90s rocker that asks, what if Fu Manchu but Wolverine Blues-era Entombed? And at its best, that’s the Absolutely Launched formula: the Man’s Ruin complete discography with a death/sludge paint job. So you get blooze boogies paired with big chungus riffs in the bridges, where Heinonen’s death rasp plays well off those riffs’ roundness. And Raukola, who hopped aboard the DDJ caravan in 2013, once again proves to be a guitar tone king, chewing up speakers with a begrimed buzz.
What’s the issue, then? Well, once you’re a few songs deep, Absolutely Launched starts to sound samey. This wasn’t a criticism that could be leveled at past works. Even The Descent, which is a modern sludge classic of single-minded sick riff snortage, had a rise and fall to the material, downshifting before dumping the clutch again. In other words, it was dynamic. Absolutely Launched‘s sequencing feints at that same dynamism, placing mid-paced songs where mid-paced songs should go and dropping in ruminative moments whenever the blueshammer fatigue sets in, but it still feels like it’s all rise, no fall, pushing ever forward in a way that sounds like what came before and what comes after. This is less of a problem when half of the music is leaking out open windows when you’re road-tripping down a highway. But the album suffers when you want it to be something more than aural wallpaper.
Still, there’s levity in there for listeners who want to dig deep. Hiding within the rock ‘n’ roll rubble of “Natural Wine Guy” is a monastic choir intoning “natural winnnnnnnnnnne guyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.” That’s fun! But too often, those Zappa-ish moments of ingenious incongruity are few and far between. The Electric Wizard-y close of the title track, with a sample collage crashing together over a thick riff, sounds killer in a vacuum. But at the end of a one-trick album, that moment doesn’t hit as hard as it could. That’s the other issue: the stench of blues, petrol, and violence is a heady cologne in the head-change sense, but this is music pitched toward fans of the style, and if you’re a fan of the style, you’ve heard most of this stuff before. There’s not enough going on in these 37 minutes to differentiate it from the cream of the genre. And while it’s notable that Demonic Death Judge can rub elbows with legends, the lack of experimentation doesn’t make for the most engaging album listen if you’ve done your time proceeding with past weedians.
So, Absolutely Launched‘s tracks almost function better as mixtape inclusions, allowing them to shine within your own predetermined rise and fall. In that light, “Goner” is a gem, utilizing Kyuss-grade riffs to elevate one of the album’s best hooks. It also allows bassist Lehtinen and drummer Lauri Pikka to shine, where they pull off that grand stoner contradiction of locking into a lazy swing. That’s that good stuff, the stuff that’s as real and heavy as fat, bearded men with tattoos can be.
