PATRIARCHS IN BLACK

Riffs don't sit around waiting to be played. You have to grab them, mold them, claim them as your own. PATRIARCHS IN BLACK have reveled in a perpetual state of urgency since emerging in 2021, and their prolific output to date has been a remorseless carnival of riffs, as the pairing of guitarist Dan Lorenzo (CASSIUS KING / VESSEL OF LIGHT / HADES) and drummer Johnny Kelly (TYPE O NEGATIVE) have breathed new life into musical ideas as old as time, from the filthiest of blues to the sharpest stoner rock and doom. "Home" is the duo's fourth album in four years, and much like its predecessors, marries Lorenzo and Kelly's music to the vibrant vocals of numerous rock and stoner alumni — oh, and hip-hop legend DMC, whose commanding voice returns to the PATRIARCHS for the second time here, on the superb "Where You Think You're Going". Never exactly what fans of this genre might expect, but always true to the principles that endure from the early days of BLACK SABBATH to the fuzz-powered diversity of today's scene, "Home" is another triumph.

Featuring an impressive list of vocalists, but always hanging together with style, PATRIARCHS IN BLACK's fourth observation remains rooted in the same mixture of heavy riffing styles that made 2022's debut album "Reach For The Scars" so easy to love. EXHORDER's Kyle Thomas turns the opening "Hymn For The Heretic" into pure fire, his scabrous tones adding dirt and density to Lorenzo's irresistibly traditional power. Former CORROSION OF CONFORMITY frontman Karl Agell weaves dusty harmonies together to scintillating effect on the desert-dwelling hallucinations of "The Call". UNIDA's new singer Mark Sunshine snarls sonorously through "Burn Through Time". Kelly Abe brings screams and growls to the concrete clatter of "Kaos", and the hulking, southern fried sludge of "Storm King" is taken to the bank by the enigmatic Joe Ferrera, whose bruised bellow drips with soul and class. In less capable hands, all of this mic-swapping would result in a scattershot, compilation vibe, but Lorenzo and Kelly's partnership is so solid and fruitful that every song feels inexorably bound in to the PATRIARCHS' overall charisma.

There are mellower, more restrained moments too. "Celestial Yard" is another stint in the spotlight for the versatile Sunshine, and its doomy, campfire vibes are made even more potent thanks to Emma Smoler's yearning violin. Similarly, "Enough Of You" has both feet squelching in Mississippi deltas, as Lorenzo shovels some extra grime onto the blues coffin-lid, vocalist Frankie Diaz flaming majestically in the foreground.

"Home" is a long album — 58 minutes — but one that earns its keep through a laudable refusal to repeat itself. That previously mentioned DMC track is the most atypical song here, but where many bands would have twisted their sound into uncomfortably urban shapes for the collaboration, PATRIARCHS IN BLACK whip up a storm of ghostly crescendos and cinematic choirs, providing the RUN DMC legend with the most unusual and effective of backdrops. With crazed prog ("Pointed Fire"),snotty, muscular punk-metal ("Ready To Die") and colossal, dropping-a-piano-on-your-head-from-a-great-height doom ("Shadows Grasp") all playing a significant role, "Home" maintains this band's esoteric identity and ensures that every idea is explored to its fullest. The closing "Sweet Blood" is perhaps the pick of the bunch, a strange, malevolent psychodrama set to yet more inspired but morbid riffing, amid a general sense that the PATRIARCHS could head anywhere and everywhere, with only a profound devotion to the power of loud guitars and thunderous drums set in stone for the future. Home is where the heavy is.