Recently, Jex Thoth’s cover of Bobb Trimble’s “When the Raven Calls” was featured in SPIN’s “Songs You Need to Download Now” section. When reading that, warning signs immediately popped into my head. A few minutes of Google research tells me those warnings weren’t unfounded. Jex Thoth members Jessica Toth and James Jackson Toth were originally in a ‘New Weird America’ psychedelic folk band called Wooden Wand. Wooden Wand were on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label, singer Jessica Toth involved with Sonic Youth at one point. Now, I don’t have a problem with people in ‘hipster’-friendly bands going metal, but there’s an amount of leverage bands like Jex Thoth have. Since Wooden Wand were in the family of musics considered part of the ‘college’ circuit - they’d be the bands not ghettoized to specialist charts when campus radio stations compile their top 10/20/50 airplay lists - they are more salable to a general audience and to generalist music magazines with their spinoffs and follow-up bands. Sometimes you get Probot, other times you get Dethklok, but hipster-friendly metal bands are more likely to be featured in the ‘leading’ metal mags, general music magazines and ‘tastemaker’ blogs. I’d like to see Whore on the cover of Decibel, but that’s not where the money is. Surprisingly, Jex Thoth are fairly decent for the style of music they play, stoner doom that sounds like a throwback to the 1970s with liberal use of Hammond organ and droning rhythms, although progressive-rock flourishes are added at times for variety. Jex Thoth’s first full-length album (an EP was recorded as Totem) is simply played and reliant on things like overdubbing and period detail, and there’s nothing here that suggests Jex Thoth are trying too hard to be ‘retro.’ If you’re looking for doom in the style of Coffins, Cathedral or Evoken you won’t find it here, but Jex Thoth don’t default to the ‘Black Sabbath‘ or ‘Soundgarden‘ settings favoured by the majority of stoner bands I’ve become familiar with over the years. I don’t even know if this could be considered metal, but I much prefer Jex Thoth to the atonal drone shit passed off as doom - I’m looking in your general direction, Sunn O))). The weakest part of the album is Jessica Toth/Jex Thoth’s voice. Sometimes her clean but forceful singing complements the music, while other times she comes across as flat and amateurish. The album sort of flags and becomes repetitive after forty minutes, and “Stone Evil” is overproduced compared to the rest of Jex Thoth’s songs. I also question the wisdom of James Jackson Toth redubbing himself Grim Jim, SNAP INTO A GRIM JIM! OH YEAH!!! Overall, not a bad full-length debut considering I expected something far worse. Still… GRIM JIM? It’s not a good sign when someone’s actual name is more menacing and evil than his stage name. Thank shit this band has musicianship to fall back on.

Written By: The Ultimate Mark