Zoroaster 

S/T

Battle Kommand Records 2006

Battle Kommand Records hits another home run, this time with Georgia based Funeral Doomsters, Zoroaster.  I am not sure if Funeral Doom is quite the appropriate term for Zoroaster's style since they are a little faster than say Thergothon, but not by much.  My favorite track is the rocking Bullwhip with its guitar battering and shouted vocals.  Honey & Salt is an instrumental doom laden funeral march that plods on for 7 minutes.  As it ends Defile picks up thematically and almost nearly musically where Honey & Salt left off.  The music here is oppressive to say the least, smothering the listener in heavy as hell and dark as night doom.  This will not be confused with the Sabbath clones floating around out there and would fall in more nicely with the drone and Funeral doom crowds without really being pigeon-holed into either style completely.  This 4 song EP also contains a 5th song unlisted which seems like a demo track and is almost completely different than the rest of the material as it is up-tempo and more traditional death metal in approach.  But you can definitely see the roots that are in full blossom on the rest of the material on the EP.  One problem I have with this MCD is that the production is muffled and it suffers somewhat from this especially in the vocal department.  After listening to Zoroaster's self-titled mini-CD I feel like I have been buried beneath mountains of lead.  The riffs are so heavy and oppressive.  Oppressive captures the feeling for me almost completely because their music darkens the sky and entombs me within walls of monolithic riffs.  I have heard that Battle Kommand's head honcho thinks he will do well with Zoroaster and after hearing this EP I tend to agree with him.