DOPELORD - Songs For Satan (Album Review)

Release Date: October 06th 2023. Record Label: Blues Funeral Recordings. Formats: CD/DD/Vinyl

Songs For Satan - Tracklisting

1. Intro

2. Night Of The Witch

3. The Chosen One

4. One Billion Skulls

5. Evil Spell

7. Worms

8. Return To The Night Of The Witch

Members

Paweł Mioduchowski - Guitars and Vocals

Piotr Ochociński - Drums

Grzegorz Pawłowski - Guitars

Piotr Zin - Bass, Vocals and Mellotron

Review:

Doom/Stoner Metallers Dopelord return with their new album Songs For Satan and their first for record label Blues Funeral Recordings who are releasing the album. This is Dopelord returning to the Occult fuelled energy of their early albums such as Magick Rites and “Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult” with a more ferocious and warped FUZZ Heavy sound. The album is deliciously flamboyant and outrageous with Dopelord’s fascination with the Occult and Devilish themes of the Doom/Stoner Metal scene. 

Taking cues from a retrospective Electric Wizard creative angle throughout the album with Dopelord’s legendary BONGED OUT HEAVY sound allowing the band to play catchy and aggressive freakish jams which comes superbly well within multiple parts of the album. Dopelord never cease to amaze by playing a classic sounding of 70’s Hard Rock and extended Freakout Jams on this album alone which has become a prominent part of their sound of their last couple albums.

Songs For Satan allows Dopelord to further expand their gloomy Psych Rock melodies and complex sounding grooves that’s full of reckless rebellion on tracks such as Night Of The Witch, The Chosen One and One Billion Skulls. The guitar tone is dirty, seedy and full of scuzzy drugged out heaviness where the FUZZ is quite aggressive but full of daring Progressive wonder. The AMPLIFIED REVERB tone of the album allows the music to be constantly paying homage to the legendary bands of the scene but also allowing Dopelord to play their own original style of Doom/Stoner Metal. 

The songwriting is intense with each song showing a different side into Dopelord’s creative psyche with the atmosphere being all knowing and all consuming especially within the heavier sludgier bombastic moments which comes mostly through Piotr Ochociński sublime drumming.

Dopelord offers  a more threatening presence on the later tracks such as Evil Spell, Worms and Return To The Night Of The Witch. As the music even remaining downright catchy places is full of spooky intense sounds and classic Occult lyrics that allows the album to become the perfect soundtrack for the upcoming Halloween and Winter Solstice season. With a neverending wicked style of downtuned grooves and extended riffs, Dopelord have released an album that matches the legendary spirit of the classic 1970’s Doom Metal scene with the progressive and FUZZED out heaviness of today’s Stoner Metal scene.

Songs For Satan is a brilliantly outlandish release that allows Dopelord further their own reputation as one of the most visionary Occult based WEEDIAN bands within the global Doom/Stoner Metal scene. This album will be talked about for years to come. That’s how great this album is.

Words by Steve Howe

Thanks to Purple Sage PR and All Noir PR for the promo.

Songs For Satan will be available to buy on Blues Funeral website, Bandcamp and EU store from October 06th 2023.

Links

Facebook ⎮ Bandcamp ⎮ Instagram

DOPELORD Unleash New Album Single "The Chosen One" From Upcoming New Album

Polish doom metal giants DOPELORD unleash new single, "The Chosen One", taken off their upcoming album "Songs for Satan"!

European Tour Dates to kick off this October!

October 6, 2023 will see Poland's doom metal giants DOPELORD release their colossal fifth studio album "Songs for Satan", issued by Blues Funeral Recordings. Following a previously-released first track, "Night Of The Witch", and a recent tour as special guests of VADER, today the Warsaw-based four-piece is presenting their new single "The Chosen One"!

Having paved the way for Polish doom metal for over a decade by sticking to their strictly DIY ethos and hard work, mighty foursome DOPELORD is about to open a new chapter of its history by joining the coveted ranks of US label Blues Funeral Recordings (Acid King, Dozer, Lowrider, Dead Meadow).

Their fifth full-length "Songs for Satan" is a moment of critical mass for DOPELORD. A blast of devil worship in the riffing realms is nothing new, and while they aren't the first band to openly embrace the motif, their amplified heresy is uniquely triumphant, their fuzz-drenched apostasy genuine and glorious.

About their new single, the band reveals:

“The song is about being delusional and thinking god/devil is speaking to you directly while you're probably a highly disturbed person."

Not only does their forthcoming offering, "Songs for Satan", showcase the band’s equal mastery of lumbering plod and silvery hooks, it also more importantly mines Polish Catholicism’s decades of oppression for lyrical fuel. Tracks like “Satan’s Call,” “The Chosen One,” “One Billion Skulls” and “Worms” are pointed in their defiance of the church’s cultural dominance, even while managing to be contagiously singable at the same time. Maybe the extremity of their position will lead a few listeners to question their beliefs and examine the church and religion’s role (whether in Polish society or elsewhere) like a strong push to open a door. The voice of rebellion is crucial, and DOPELORD’s shout is unmistakable.

Calling to mind Electric Wizard, Windhand, Belzebong and Acid King, "Songs for Satan" is DOPELORD’s apex, an iconoclastic milestone for stoner doom that rumbles the earth and shakes our figurative foundations. It will be available on October 6th, 2023 in various vinyl editions, limited digipak CD and digital. The ultra-limited deluxe edition will be shipped a few weeks prior to PostWax subscribers.

New album "Songs for Satan". Out October 6th on Blues Funeral Recordings
Preorder on Blues Funeral website, Bandcamp and EU store

TRACKLIST:

1. Intro
2. Night Of The Witch
3. The Chosen One
4. One Billion Skulls
5. Evil Spell
7. Worms
8. Return To The Night Of The Witch

Rock and roll’s history with Satan goes back to before there even was rock and roll. A blast of devil-worship in the riffing realms is nothing new, and Warsaw, Poland’s DOPELORD aren't the first band to openly embrace the motif. Even so, their amplified heresy is uniquely triumphant, their fuzz-drenched apostasy genuine and glorious. The band coalesced in late 2010 in the city of Lublin, Poland, where three of the soon-to-be-band's members attended university. Merging members from two previous groups and pulling inspiration from classic cult films, 70s rock, occult themes and magical herbs, the quartet set its sights on stoner doom before the style had taken much hold in their country.

DOPELORD released their debut Magick Rites in 2012, a record that flaunted their love of vintage heavy rock and proto-metal, which The Sludgelord noted for its "huge unstoppable riffing in every song." 2014’s Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult was a leap forward in songcraft, and as the band got serious, they began touring abroad in Western Europe, the members also completing a relocation to Polish capital city Warsaw. Critically-acclaimed 2017 album "Children of the Haze" found their formula for drawn-out psych-sludge behemoths perfected, as confirmed by The Heavy Chronicles, which proclaimed, “Nothing will be the same again. There used to be doom, now there is Dopelord.”

As if heralding the actual end times, fourth LP "Sign of the Devil" arrived on March 10, 2020, just as the covid-19 pandemic took terrifying hold of the planet and called the knowable future of humanity into question. Supremely confident in their infectious bludgeon and thematic overtness, DOPELORD presented a record that stepped more fully than ever into both melody and rebellious iconoclasm. Naming "Sign of the Devil" their album of the week, Worship Metal cheered it as, “a torrent of ear-pleasingly suffocating riffs which crush all in their path," adding, "Satan would be pleased."

Derailed from their aggressive live schedule for two years, DOPELORD blasted out the “Reality Dagger" EP in 2021 before setting to work on their boldest statement yet. On October 6th, 2023, their fifth album "Songs for Satan" will induct the mighty foursome as one of Europe's heaviest and most faithful doom purveyors of the new era, crushing everything on their path under the Blues Funeral Recordings banner.

About the PostWax series: The PostWax vinyl subscription series presents exclusive limited-edition records from some of the best stoner rock, doom and heavy psych bands on the planet. Benefiting from a spectacular success in 2018, PostWax Year One debuted monster releases to subscribers first — including Elder's "The Gold & Silver Sessions" and Lowrider's seminal comeback album "Refractions" — which were subsequently released in standard retail versions to the public several months later. PostWax II will unfold as a series of 9 deluxe releases on gorgeous vinyl, next-level sleeve design, hand-crafted art and illustrations, and behind-the-scenes liner notes, with releases from Dead Meadow, Acid King, Dozer, Josiah, Dopelord, Mammoth Volume, The Otolith, REZN & Vinnum Sabbathi, Lowrider & Elephant Tree.

Catch DOPELORD live on tour this Fall:

Oct 12 Prague Modra Vopice
Oct 13 Cottbus Muggefug
Oct 14 Jena KuBa
Oct 15 Braunschweig B58
Oct 16 Hamburg Hafenklang
Oct 17 Malmö Plan B
Oct 18 Copenhagen Loppen
Oct 19 Kiel Schaubude
Oct 20 Groningen Café de Walrus
Oct 21 Nijmegen Doornroosje
Oct 22 Antwerpen Trix DesertFest Belgium
Oct 23 Lille La Bulle Café
Oct 24 Osnabrück Bastard Club
Oct 25 Düdingen Bad Bonn
Oct 26 Düsseldorf Pitcher
Oct 27 Berlin Lido Heavy Psych Sounds Fest
Oct 28 Dresden Chemiefabrik Heavy Psych Sounds Fest

DOPELORD links

Facebook⎮Bandcamp⎮Instagram⎮Spotify

DOPELORD is

Paweł Mioduchowski - Guitars and Vocals
Piotr Ochociński - Drums
Grzegorz Pawłowski - Guitars
Piotr Zin - Bass, Vocals and Mellotron

Thanks to All Noir PR and Purple Sage PR for all of the details. 

Polish doom metal giants DOPELORD to release new album "Songs for Satan" on Blues Funeral Recordings; first single and pre-order available!

Warsaw doom metal heavyweights DOPELORD have announced the release of their fifth studio album "Songs for Satan" to be issued on October 6th as part of Blues Funeral Recordings' deluxe PostWax series. Dive into this gigantic new album with the debut single "Night Of The Witch" streaming on all platforms now!

“Hear you laughing from the dark/As they pray to their god/Now their time has finally come/To reap what they’ve sown.” - Dopelord, 2023

Stream Dopelord's new single "Night of the Witch" at this location

Having paved the way for Polish doom metal for over a decade by sticking to their strictly DIY ethos and hard work, mighty foursome DOPELORD is about to open a new chapter of its history by joining the coveted ranks of US label Blues Funeral Recordings (Acid King, Dozer, Lowrider, Dead Meadow).

Their fifth full-length "Songs for Satan" is a moment of critical mass for Dopelord. A blast of devil worship in the riffing realms is nothing new, and while they aren't the first band to openly embrace the motif, their amplified heresy is uniquely triumphant, their fuzz-drenched apostasy genuine and glorious.

Not only does "Songs for Satan" showcase the band’s equal mastery of lumbering plod and silvery hooks, but it also more importantly mines Polish Catholicism’s decades of oppression for lyrical fuel. Tracks like “Satan’s Call,” “The Chosen One,” “One Billion Skulls” and “Worms” are pointed in their defiance of the church’s cultural dominance, even while managing to be contagiously singable at the same time. Maybe the extremity of their position will lead a few listeners to question their own beliefs and examine the church’s role, religion’s role (whether in Polish society or elsewhere) like a strong push to open a door. The voice of rebellion is crucial, and Dopelord’s shout is unmistakable.

Calling to mind Electric Wizard, Windhand, Belzebong and Acid King, "Songs for Satan" is Dopelord's apex, an iconoclastic milestone for stoner doom that rumbles the earth and shakes our figurative foundations. It will be available on October 6th in various vinyl editions, limited digipack CD and digital. The ultra-limited deluxe vinyl edition will be shipped a few weeks prior to PostWax subscribers.

New album "Songs for Satan" - Out October 6th on Blues Funeral Recordings

Preorder on Blues Funeral website, Bandcamp and EU store

TRACKLIST:

1. Intro
2. Night Of The Witch
3. The Chosen One
4. One Billion Skulls
5. Evil Spell
7. Worms
8. Return To The Night Of The Witch

Rock and roll’s history with Satan goes back to before there even was rock and roll. A blast of devil-worship in the riffing realms is nothing new, and Warsaw, Poland’s DOPELORD aren't the first band to openly embrace the motif. Even so, their amplified heresy is uniquely triumphant, their fuzz-drenched apostasy genuine and glorious. The band coalesced in late 2010 in the city of Lublin, Poland, where three of the soon-to-be-band's members attended university. Merging members from two previous groups and pulling inspiration from classic cult films, 70s rock, occult themes and magical herbs, the quartet set its sights on stoner doom before the style had taken much hold in their country.

DOPELORD released their debut "Magick Rites" in 2012, a record that flaunted their love of vintage heavy rock and proto-metal, which The Sludgelord noted for its "huge unstoppable riffing in every song." 2014’s "Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult" was a leap forward in songcraft, and as the band got serious, they began touring abroad in Western Europe, the members also completing a relocation to Polish capital city Warsaw. Critically-acclaimed 2017 album "Children of the Haze" found their formula for drawn-out psych-sludge behemoths perfected, as confirmed by The Heavy Chronicles, which proclaimed, “Nothing will be the same again. There used to be doom, now there is Dopelord.”

As if heralding the actual end times, fourth LP "Sign of the Devil" arrived on March 10, 2020, just as the covid-19 pandemic took terrifying hold of the planet and called the knowable future of humanity into question. Supremely confident in their infectious bludgeon and thematic overtness, DOPELORD presented a record that stepped more fully than ever into both melody and rebellious iconoclasm. Naming "Sign of the Devil" their album of the week, Worship Metal cheered it as, “a torrent of ear-pleasingly suffocating riffs which crush all in their path," adding, "Satan would be pleased."

Derailed from their aggressive live schedule for two years, DOPELORD blasted out the “Reality Dagger" EP in 2021 before setting to work on their boldest statement yet. On October 6th, 2023, their fifth album "Songs for Satan" will induct the mighty foursome as one of Europe's heaviest and most faithful doom purveyors of the new era, crushing everything on their path under the Blues Funeral Recordings banner.

Dopelord on tour:

Oct 12 Prague Modra Vopice
Oct 13 Cottbus Muggefug
Oct 14 Jena KuBa
Oct 15 Braunschweig B58
Oct 16 Hamburg Hafenklang
Oct 17 Malmö Plan B
Oct 18 Copenhagen Loppen
Oct 19 Kiel Schaubude
Oct 20 Groningen Café de Walrus
Oct 21 Nijmegen Doornroosje
Oct 22 Antwerpen Trix DesertFest Belgium
Oct 23 Lille La Bulle Café
Oct 24 Osnabrück Bastard Club
Oct 25 Düdingen Bad Bonn
Oct 26 Düsseldorf Pitcher
Oct 27 Berlin Lido Heavy Psych Sounds Fest
Oct 28 Dresden Chemiefabrik Heavy Psych Sounds Fest

About the PostWax series: The PostWax vinyl subscription series presents exclusive limited-edition records from some of the best stoner rock, doom and heavy psych bands on the planet. Benefiting from a spectacular success in 2018, PostWax Year One debuted monster releases to subscribers first — including Elder's "The Gold & Silver Sessions" and Lowrider's seminal comeback album "Refractions" — which were subsequently released in standard retail versions to the public several months later. PostWax II will unfold as a series of 9 deluxe releases on gorgeous vinyl, next-level sleeve design, hand-crafted art and illustrations, and behind-the-scenes liner notes, with releases from Dead Meadow, Acid King, Dozer, Josiah, Dopelord, Mammoth Volume, The Otolith, REZN & Vinnum Sabbathi, Lowrider & Elephant Tree.

DOPELORD is

Paweł Mioduchowski - Guitars and Vocals
Piotr Ochociński - Drums
Grzegorz Pawłowski - Guitars
Piotr Zin - Bass, Vocals and Mellotron

DOPELORD links

Facebook ⎮ Bandcamp ⎮ Instagram ⎮ Spotify

BLUES FUNERAL RECORDINGS links

Website ⎮ Facebook ⎮ Bandcamp ⎮ Instagram

Thanks to Purple Sage PR for all of the details.

Dopelord - Children Of The Haze (Album Review)

Release date: January 16th 2017. Label: Self Released. Format: DD

Children Of The Haze – Tracklisting

1.Navigator 08:06

2.Scum Priest 06:11

3.Children of the Haze 07:27

4.Skulls and Candles 03:50

5.Dead Inside (I&II) 09:19

6.Reptile Sun 05:58

Band Members

Grzegorz Pawłowski - guitar

Piotr Zin - bass & vocals

Paweł Mioduchowski - guitar & vocals

Tomasz Walczak - drums

Review

Slow, heavy, perfectly drawn out and most importantly, completely massive riffs dominate Children Of The Haze, the new album from Warsaw's Dopelord and they go far into defining the band in the best way possible but aside from the riffs, they seem to have stepped up their knack for crafting great songs and this album is a step up from their last album Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult (and this album is again inspired by that particular holy trinity) and shows exactly why this new album is their best yet.

As soon as the first big riff rings out on the albums opening track Navigator its a heady barge of monstrous riffs (Navigator alone has many) throughout the album and that combined with a punishing groove, some precise solos and commanding vocals makes for a head altering mixture.

The band obviously worship Sabbath as all the best bands do but there are also elements of legends like Sleep, The Obsessed, Cathedral and Kyuss in there too.

The vibe varies throughout the album too from soaringly powerful doom which is best demonstrated on songs like Skulls And Candles which sounds like the bastard son of vintage Pentagram while tracks like Scum Priest and the albums title track verge on the obscenely heavy side ala Eyehategod and sound all the better for it, all attitude that bursts out the speakers.

While the vocals and the rhythm section on the album are all pretty much faultless, ultimately it is the power of the riff that is running the show here and the riffs are plentiful on Children Of The Haze.

The crushing Dead Inside (I&II) exemplifies this more than anything else on the album (and that is saying something!) and is a definite highlight here, the power oozing from the speakers as it plays and encompasses your ears and as well as the beautiful heaviness, it has an air of melody that complements the song extremely well and when the conclusion of the track emits an extra special 70s-esque vibe (the emphatic nature of hard rock from that decade is directly in the DNA of Dopelord) with a brilliant high octane solo where the energy just explodes and ends the song on an energetic high.

As the album draws its final breath as the notes of last track Reptile Sun ring out (itself a fuzz laden and grooving beast of a track), you are struck by the power of of this album.

Black Sabbath may have recently called it quits once and for all (probably?!) but their spirit for the riff lives on in Dopelord and if you love the spirit of the riff then you'll love Dopelord and this album.

Words by Gavin Brown

Links:

Facebook | BandCamp