Vessel – The Somnifer

by Mark 'Yeti' Richard · December 20, 2024

Vessel is a two piece stoner rock/ doom metal band from Bendigo, Australia. The band just released their latest album The Somnifer, on Sweden’s Majestic Mountain Records on November 1st 2024. Their prior releases include 2012’s Introspective EP, 2017’s Nostalgia, and 2020’s Vagabond Blues. The band consists of Jordan Forster on guitars and Mason Matheson on bass and vocals. The drums were performed by Marcus Ryan. Vessel utilize other guest musicians on The Somnifer also. The album features ten tracks and is around forty one minutes long.

The Somnifer opens with the instrumental title track. The song begins with clean guitar and builds into a nice mellow desert rock introduction that sets the wheels in motion for a deep sonic journey. The track leads into “Draining The Labyrinth”, a transcendental passage of the psychological transverse between the conscious and unconscious. The song starts with clean guitar and pick scraping the frets and proceeds into a heavy riff rocking build up. Vessel utilizes synth sounds and spoken words on this track and it blends right into “Rapid Eye Movement” with a cool bass rhythm and a simple drum beat with a poppy snare sound. The psychedelic guitars join in with spoken vocals that become enhanced with a distorted voice effect. Beautiful female vocals are also present in which the song is augmented with the two styles. Vessel cranks in the fuzz with a bluesy lead that flows right into the uptempo song, “Eat The Day”. Matheson’s vocals are up in the mix accompanied by a stoner rock sounding rhythm and a cool swinging drum beat. Vessel then descends into “Delta Waves”, a spacy instrumental with nice mellow guitar work. It acts as an introduction to the slow and heavy “Recurring Nightmare”. The sludgy riff pounding of the song has a haunting aura of doom in both the music and the old Celtic Frost style vocals.

The thirty eight second interlude “Regeneration” flows right into the longest cut on the record, “Image Rehearsal Reaction”. This ten plus minute song really represents the musical essence and experience of The Somnifer album. The soft and lush start has an in depth sampling explanation of dream states and the drifting dynamics of the conscious and unconscious mind. The song takes the listener on a musical tour of Kyuss-y movements with psychedelic meanders of desert rock riffing and leads. It’s the album’s most varied and creative track. “False Awakening Continuum” is an instrumental interlude with a cello, which is an interesting diversion. The final song on The Somnifer is a cover from The Sisters of Mercy entitled “Body And Soul”. Vessel does a bang up job of making the song sound fitting like one of their own. It’s a good version and a compelling way to finalize the album.

Vessel has a riveting style of sonic variations. The Somnifer is an illuminating musical voyage of desert rock, psychedelia, doom, and experimental sounds which are all blended together in an encapsulated vessel.