Brume – Rooster
Rooster is an album by American stoner rock group Brume, from San Francisco, California, released on April 20. Fifty one minutes long, the record has six tracks: Grit and Pearls, Harold, Reckon, Call the Serpent's Bluff, Welter and Tradewind. With the traditional approach to the genre, densely eroded by pervasively abrasive guitars that drive exceedingly slow rhythms to the normal persuasive axis of its expansive sonorous universe, Rooster is a reasonable album, with interesting melodies and intricate harmonies. Nonetheless, as usual for the genre, the draconian stylish virtues of the work are too excessively dragged all the way through, which makes the album overtly monotonous, after a while. Which, of course, is more of a characteristic of the genre itself, than a fault of the band, that only follows the traditional style of their genre of choice.
Unfortunately, there is little Rooster can offer to more experienced enthusiasts of the genre, although the album has expressive merits. With poetic passages, some sober and marvelously exceptional guitar lines, and, above all the other elements, fascinating and perfectly aligned female vocals – certainly the most efficient and wonderfully creative flavor of Brume’s music – Rooster can be majorly described by its efficient set of qualities, despite the fact that Brume narrowly escapes the traditional ordinary features of the genre.
I think enthusiasts of stoner rock will definitely be overjoyed by this album. In a more technical evaluation, Brume can be ostensibly described as a promising band, although they have potential to be more creative in some aspects. But the treatment displayed by them at the sonorous configuration of their own style shows, indeed, a very energized and confident band, with real musical proficiency, a major technical domain, and a formidable sense of intuitive creativity. They do manage to stay above the average score, as they have a superior sense of formal solicitude, concerning their competent, veracious and vehement artistic skills.
Although I can’t qualify Rooster as a masterpiece, in its own terms this work can be classified as a major album – especially in the vein of its technical abilities –, and I can’t deny the fact that this record shows a formidable degree of originality, and its own frame of artistic achievements. Evidently, Rooster is a very good stoner rock album, and certainly, has an enormous potential to find a respectable audience within the underground music scene.
