The beauty of this conglomeration of materials hits you from several angles. For one, the gatefold is hard-glossy and almost slippery with shine. The artwork, by John Dyer Baizley, is crucial as well because it flaunts bright, bouncy color like a peacock’s tail without crossing over into psychedelic-cheese territory.
The vinyl is simply delicious, as you can see, and the CD is lovely as well and only adds to the luster. (Apparently dozens of versions — by this I mean editions with different color schemes, etc. — of In Return have been released, so when you pick up your copy you may very well be getting a different slab than what you see here.)
The music itself is a decent homebrew of Melvins sensibilities (King Buzzo’s big butt is lurking around the vocals especially), Isis‘ lumbering-metal-as-post-rock stylings and, most of all, Sleep.
When your going for the Doom gold only the sludgiest riffs will do. Torche don’t quite deliver a knockout punch, but they certainly don’t hit the mat, either. I’ll take this over the mutton-headed chops of Boris’ Pink any day.
