I Hate Records is strange. The label name and logo suggest death metal, but I Hate seems mainly to deal in stoner rock and stoner doom. Likewise, the album cover of The Gates of Slumber’s Suffer No Guilt and the descriptions of the song in the liner notes suggest power metal. Surprisingly, I did not get boring power metal from The Gates of Slumber. Unsurprisingly, I got boring stoner rock.

There’s nothing that interests me about The Gates of Slumber. Standard-issue stoner rock is on display here - fuzzed-out Black Sabbath-esque guitar tones, singer that sounds somewhat like Ozzy Osbourne, typical stoner riffs that I’ve heard many times before. The Gates of Slumber have no identity. Even in 2000 when I more heavily listened to this stuff, The Gates of Slumber would have been boring to me. They don’t have catchy and/or sufficiently foreboding songs, the production is too trebly for this kind of music and there’s no sense of aggression to any of the songs on Suffer No Guilt. It doesn’t help that some of the songs are at least eight minutes long, which sucks as they aren’t an interesting eight minutes.

The musicianship’s fine, it’s just that I find The Gates of Slumber dull as hell. Surprisingly good lyrics aside, I just ain’t feeling it with Suffer No Guilt. Maybe I need to buy a bong and actually smoke marijuana first.

Written By: The Ultimate Mark