Minotaur Head - Minotaur Head

Minotaur Head
Minotaur Head
2016 War Anthems Records
Yet another collaboration that you just knew was going to happen sooner or later.  Bob Bagchus of Soulburn and Rogga Johansson of a multitude of death metal projects and bands got together to create some seriously heavy doom metal.  To help out, they enlisted Theo van Eekelen from Hail of Bullets and Ronnie Björnström, who has participated with Rogga for several different projects in the past.  The band claim to be a mix of Black Sabbath, (pre-hippie) Trouble, and Winter.  It's easy to tell that Winter's influence comes in the distortion and the vocals.  I'm not quite sold on the Trouble influence, and while early Black Sabbath is definitely there, I'm more inclined to say that the majority of Minotaur Head's influences stem from the likes of The Obsessed, Internal Void, Unorthodox, with the guitar solos owing a lot to some of Dave Chandler's (Saint Vitus) more frenzied moments.  Rogga handles vocals here, and he opted for an old school death metal style.  This was a good choice, as belted-out clean vocals would not be well suited here at all.  I for one am hoping this is not going to be just a one-off project.  On the other hand, it's awful damn hard to improve upon perfection.