Opium Warlords “Live at Colonia Dignidad” CD/2xLP

"Live at Colonia Dignidad" (released by Cobra Records) is the monstrous 77-minute debut album from the unusually peculiar Finnish act Opium Warlords, whose lone member, as far as I can tell, is Sami Albert Hynninen (who's been in a shitload of other bands, though the only one I've ever heard of is Reverend Bizarre). Referring to the band as "a vessel of sonic occultism", Hynninen also seems to have some sense of humor buried amidst Opium Warlords' dark, somber aesthetic. For example, the first two influences listed on the MySpace page are Toto and Burzum, and the band is also self-described to "sound like" everything from "gothic vampire shit" to "a Bolivian doom metal band learning a riff". And the oddities don't end there! The compositions range from 17-minute epics of crawling, droning, stripped down doom with spacious, melodic pulses of bass and lightly fuzzed dual-guitar runs ("Feel the Funeral Breeze") to the grinding, five-second hardcore/punk blast of closer "Support the Satanic Youth"; while the vocals cover your expected range of pained snarls 'n' sneers, chant-like wails, and appropriate, quality singing in many instances. As opposed to simply sending me mp3's, the label insisted on sending me a CD all the way from Finland, and I'm glad they did, because the general weirdness that seems to follow this band around continues throughout the packaging—which, in addition to utilizing a good amount of not-very-"doomy" pink, contains everything from quotes regarding necrophilia to child-like drawings of bunnies. Very strange. You really have to see/hear this one for yourself to get a feel for all the wacky little idiosyncrasies of the band, the one sample below is far from a complete representation of the album as a whole. It's really quite interesting, and I'm truly enjoying it...

Opium Warlords "Overwhelm Me, Black Sorrow" (excerpt)

All the pain in life you feel. All the filth in the world you see. Meet me at the iron place and kneel. I will show you the way to be free...

Levykauppa Äx (in Finland)
Record Shop X (elsewhere)