10,000 YEARS - Megafauna (Mini-Review)

This year, in an attempt to cover more music that would all-too-oft slip through the very large cracks, we're trying something new and novel around these parts. Namely, we're gonna actually publish the little one-off reviews that were previously (and arbitrarily) deemed too short for publication. In that spirit, here's a mini-review of a single I'm been spinning quite a bit as of late.

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Written by: The Administrator

​10,000 Years are back in the stoner doom fold with a new album this month, and with a new album come new singles. Hence: the gloriously badass "Megafauna." It is not, notably, the first single released from the forthcoming III to date, but it's a banger, and I simply couldn't wait to talk it up.

There are a variety of things that go hard as fuck in relation to this track. Let me count 'em for your convenience:

1. This old-skool cool cover art
2. The notion of extraterrestrial megafauna
3. Those riffs. My god, those riffs.

For those unfamiliar, 10,000 Years sound exactly like you might expect, given their (I can only assume) High On Fire inspired moniker. "Megafauna," in turn, sounds like much of their prior work, and for that I am thankful. Big meaty stoner riffs stomp with the relative grave of a prehistoric behemoth. Sludgy stuff, in a word. Cymbals crash with thunderous aplomb. Roared vocals cut through the fray with raw uncut--not "emotive" in the typical sense of the word, but certainly loaded with a tangible fury. The leads burrow and crest, helping to maintain a level of dynamic interest that all too often is ignored by other stoner doom outfits in a quest to bludgeon through repetition. Everything here is coated in a thick algae-esque patina. Sonically, nothing in the 10,000 Years formula is fresh per se, but they do what they do really damn well. Thematically, however, their continuing multi-album saga of a crew crash-landed on an alien world lens some serious narrative interest to their project as a whole.
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In my mind, this track is the soundtrack to a kaiju movie set in the swamps of Dagobah. It's damn good stuff, and if you're in the mood for some thicc stoner doom, 10,000 Years are, y'know, probably a safe bet. "Megafauna" is a great song, and, along with its cohort of singles, serves as an accurate harbinger of what III has to offer. Grab that preorder here!

10,000 Years - III will be released June 24th, 2022 via Interstellar Smoke Records 

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10,000 Years can be found:
Bandcamp
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