Orange Goblin: "Red Tide Rising"

Orange Goblin are part of the old guard of modern stoner rock and have been at this about as long as anyone, having formed the same year Kyuss broke up (1995). So they're hardly ones to need advice from the newer breed of toked up anklebiters on the scene... yet you can't help while listening to "Red Tide Rising" that the band have spent the five yeas since their last album (Healing Through Fire, 2007) listening to Mastodon and High on Fire. There's a lot of those relatively trebly power chords that regularly break up out of the groove, whereas with traditional stoner rock the tendency is to find a comfortable groove and just sit back in the pocket. Not that this evolution is a bad thing, and truthfully "Red Tide Rising" is one of the better tracks on an album (A Eulogy for the Damned) that frankly could stand to break from tradition a bit more often.