Count Cromulent – Thrillhouse
February 25th, 2023
Desert / Stoner Rock / Doom Metal
Independently Released
St. John’s, Newfoundland
Count Cromulent first emerged onto the Newfoundland heavy music scene with the Record Production Month Challenge in the year of 2020 with their first album, Louder! Their sound is an interesting and eclectic combination of progressive rock, psychedelic rock, electronica, and other experimental sounds, all poured into a blender to create a unique soundscape that careers across the airwaves. While the project’s previous output has been somewhat understated in its heaviness, this latest effort sees the Count embrace the dirtier side of guitar music with a sound rooted firmly in the desert rock and stoner doom camps.
Ever the Simpsons-referencing project that this is, Thrillhouse is an instrumental and auditory concept album about the Van Houten Estate, a haunted mansion that surveys the landscape of the city of Springfield from its highest hills. Count Cromulent embraces this concept full-throatedly, providing a series of eight tracks that chronicle the titular Millhouse’s descent into madness as he traverses the darkness of the manor’s inner corridors.
The guitar and bass work on here is no doubt inspired by the likes of Jack White and The White Stripes as much as it is the works of Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age, and other bands considered seminal in the desert rock movement of the 90’s. Despite coming screaming out of amplifiers based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, these songs would sound right at home along the palm-laden beaches and Sonoran sands of Southern California. The bright tones and bluesy soloing are part and parcel of the genre, and Count Cromulent embraces both with competency and energy across this whole thing.
There’s also a great deal of variety on this record. Whereas a track like “The Front Door (Kicked In)” is exactly the kind of high octane kick to the gonads that any solid rock album needs, other tracks, like “Bonestorm”, are decidedly groovier, riffier, and sound more akin to an extended jam session. Following that, the song “Thunder Reigns”, which gives a welcome degree of deference to the bass guitar, is easily the heaviest, most crushing, and doomy song on the entire album.
The drums are relatively simplistic but they don’t really need to get too up in arms or ecstatic to serve the purpose of the music provided on this record. They lay down the beat, get a bit groovy when necessary, and are largely restrained in the amount of rolls and fills they engage in. Much in the same way as Meg White delivers exactly what The White Stripes need from the percussion section in their music, Count Cromulent’s drums are stripped down, to the point, and exactly what the doctor ordered, with perhaps the exception of the upbeat and super-fun approach that the drums take on the surf-laden ditty “Radioactive Man” or the noisy chaos of “Ripper”.
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the fantastic synthesizer work on here as well, laden across each track throughout the record’s runtime. As if the spaced out guitar work and fuzzed out bass didn’t make this album sound spacey enough, the synthesizers definitely add a layer of atmosphere to this album that help it venture from desert rock into straight up space rock territory, especially on the track “A Case of the Fantods”. It’s excellent.
The production on here, as you might have guessed by my previous references to space rock and atmosphere, is excellent as well. I love how massive and ethereal this whole thing sounds, more like I’m taking a journey through the infinite galactic void than a haunted hilltop mansion. Everything is so reverb-heavy and cosmic in scope. I love it.
As far as RPM albums go, this one really got to me. It’s easily one of my favourite releases to ever come out of that annual art challenge, and considering the sheer glut of new releases that crop up in February and March, that’s saying something. As far as heavier releases go, this too, is up there for me. I like the Count Cromulent albums that preceded this one, but this one takes the cake within their discography for me thus far. I hope the project continues along this trajectory, but I also hope they never make the same album twice.
Final Verdict: 8/10
Great
Favourite Tracks:
“The Front Door (Kicked In)”
“Bonestorm”
“Thunder Reigns”
“A Case of the Fantods”
~ Akhenaten
HeavyNFLD 