This one's a heavy sumbitch, I tell you what. Stone Titan are a heavy, sludgy, doom-inspired Metal band that combine everything from Punk to Psychedelic music. Last month, Stone Titan put out a small album (8 songs) of just pure sludge-laden Metal, named Scratch 'N' Sniff. I've found it both entirely different and off-puting, but I keep coming back for more, and I'm finding myself enjoying the madness a little more each time.
Scratch 'N' Sniff certainly isn't for everyone. It's abrasive and offensive. The album cover has a man using a toilet and slitting his wrists, with rainbows and all sorts of brightly colored objects flowing outward. And with song titles like "I Wish I Was Fucking Dead" and "Alaskan Thunderfuck" they certainly aren't looking for anyone else's approval.
The album opens with "I Wish I Was Fucking Dead" and it just slams you right in the face, with a heavy riff and screamed vocals. Then it goes into "Groovy Warhead Commander" where the vocals are mostly growled...until the last minute or so where it just becomes weird guttural screams and noises. After that is my favorite song, "Alaskan Thunderfuck" and instrumental. The riffing and groove on this song have me going back to it the most, it's a fun, noisy raucous. If there is one song you listen to, it's this one. Next is "Faul", and it hits like a kick in the teeth with it's growled vocals and immediate, hard as nails riff. Are you starting to see a trend here? The next song up is "Can O Worms" and it brings in some Hardcore like blastbeats before settling down into a noisy groove. Feedback as part of the riffs in these tracks I think is ingenious, and is a nice technique borrowed from Noise Rock. As soon as "Can O Worms" starts, you have just enough time to headbang a couple dozen times and then it's over, coming in at only 2:18, and then it bursts right into the next selection of aggression, "Miles Away From Sober", which is all of 1:19. It's pure noisy goodness, right up until the end, which is all just...fart sounds. After that display we get "A Brief Overview of Overweight Men", which returns back to the sounds earlier on the album of combining screaming and growling with real doom-y, fuzzed out riffs, and a heavy ass beat. Then we round out the album with the self-titled track, "Scratch 'N' Sniff", which at 6:23 is the longest song on the album. It runs through all the previously explored concepts and just lets them flow through until they've explored them all they could, which turns out to be about 6 1/2 minutes, give or take the 2 minutes of silence before a blast of nothing but noise that finishes out the track.
I've found reviewing this album to be a bit difficult because I'm having a hard time figuring out why I've been connecting with this album so much when usually something like this wouldn't be my style. Truthfully, if you hear one song you've heard them all, all 8 songs on Scratch 'N' Sniff sound roughly the same. Some have different riffs, some have different drum beats, some have more or less feedback, but they mostly sound the same. And I think that's kind of why I like it. Since it's coming in at approximately 27 minutes in length, it's not long enough for me to get annoyed at the same-ness. Instead, Stone Titan come in and just blast pure testosterone at you for just under a half hour and then they're done. Another thing that stands out to me is that the vocals are never in the fore-front. The vocals are 99% of the time screamed or growled, but they aren't mixed in the front of the tracks, they're mixed more like another instrument, while the super fuzzy and distorted guitar takes more of a front seat. A lot of the times with Hardcore music where all they do is growl or scream, my ears will get tired of it real quick because it's all I can focus on. But with Scratch 'N' Sniff, I can focus more on just the experience of the song, blasting me in the goddamn face like a bag of bricks. This isn't something I would recommend for everyone. In fact, even I don't want to listen to the individual tracks, save "Alaskan Thunderfuck", unless I listen to the whole thing and just soak it in.
I looked Stone Titan up, and they're about as Indie as can be. Up to this point, they've released everything themselves. I decided that for an experience like this that is so unique to me, I had to support them, so I went to their website and ordered Scratch 'N' Sniff on vinyl, of which they've only pressed 300 copies. What I did find interesting is that they didn't press a cd. You can either buy the vinyl or you can go to their Bandcamp and buy the digital copy for $10. At any rate, if you're into Doom Metal, Noise Rock/Metal, or just want a new experience, check out Scratch 'N' Sniff.
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