Miss Lava - Doom Machine • GRIMM Gent

Miss Lava – Doom Machine

18/02/2021

Doom Machine by Miss Lava starts of with a countdown for the first song ‘Fourth Dimension’. A brassy rock riff leads you up to the first words of lead singer Johnny Lee. His raw voice matches the brassiness of the guitars. The simple, yet attractive guitars succeed to get you in a trance and hooked to the rest of the song.

Steady beats get us into the next song ‘Into the Mire’, a more stoner, maybe even a bit psychedelic sounding song. After the first minute the guitar gets a little lighter and the song has a bit less of a stoner rock vibe and more of a heavy rock vibe. There is a nice balance between instrumental parts and words. And damn, that guitar riff is solid. At the end of the song, we get to experience an acoustic guitar in between all that is going on. This is definitely adding an extra dimension to the song.

During the instrumental track ‘Magma’, my eye got caught on the album cover. It does look like flames, or magma, going its way in different directions. It also has a psychedelic touch to it. I think I see a guitar on the right side of the cover. The album cover doesn’t seem to show one thing in particular, which leaves the interpretation to the one looking at it. Or maybe this is the picture of the Doom Machine, that each of us can create.

‘Brotherhood of Eternal Love’ opens with a slow buzzing guitar. Whispering lyrics are spoken on top of it. The whispers make place for clear words spoken with passion. I think this is the song that is the closest to the reason why they wrote this album: the death of the son of guitarist K.Raffah, who was sadly only a month and a half old.

Besides the tragic death of a loved one, this album is also celebrating other loved ones from band members being born. Miss Lava say that they feel the presence of K.Raffah’s son every time.

“This album reflects on how each one of us can breed and unleash our own self-destructive force, assembled to be part of a giant ‘Doom Machine.”
Johnny Lee

This album will bring you in a sort of dazzling state, where your thoughts go to all different kind of places; the dark, the light, the past and the future. You will also wake up with a state of mind to attack your own self-destructive force, whatever that might be for you. Lay down, think, listen, wake up, act. ‘Doom Machine’ will give you short instrumental tracks that add to that almost zen like feeling with tracks ‘Magma’, ‘Karma’ and ‘Terra’, evenly placed in the album.

Closer of the album and title track ‘Doom Machine’ is the longest song on the album. Ready to show us all of the above. It rocks, it takes time, goes down and gets up again, all in the vibe of buzzing electric guitars with a stoner vibe. The album can get a bit repetitive tough. If you heard the style of which the first songs are written, you know what the rest of the songs will sound like. Yet, they all have a different vibe to them and each and every song is an addition to the story. Therefore I would recommend listening to the whole thing.

Doom Machine is fast, it’s slow, it’s beating, it’s weeping, but mostly it’s breathing. Miss Lava succeeded to bring this album to life by adding different tempos and vibes in their songs, all written within the same formula.