Review: Boobs of Doom – Hypnagogia Ekstasis

Boobs-of-Doom-Hypnagogia-Ekstasis

Like many before (and no doubt since) I was first drawn in by the name. After all it’s right up there with Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs and Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard for ridiculousness. We’re talking 2016 and their WOW Is Dead is reviewed in The Wire. It gets a good review as well, and quite rightly so, it’s a superb work of electro doom desolation and paranoia. On Bandcamp the album was labelled as Charityware, pay what you like but with a signpost to various charities they’d like you to consider donating to, right on.

I can’t quite recall what happened but I ended up with the album emailed to me direct. Why I can’t recall brings us in quite a circular route to the new album, it’s title and what it’s all about. Back in 2016 I was being heavily medicated for a prolapsed disc in my neck that made daily life and work unbearable. An array of pills to get me through the day for the previous 18 months plus sleeping pills at night so I didn’t wake up every hour. You see, Boobs of Doom are not well people and this album is about what it’s like to be them ‘meandering through the day heavily medicated and exhausted; existing in semi- self-imposed isolation bubbles.

Hypnagogia Ekstasis distills the outer body experience of being on high dose nerve pain meds and sleeping pills while you force yourself to stay up as long as you possibly can; all in the hope that doing so might, just might get you to sleep through a whole night. Watching just one more episode of whatever, on the cusp of unconsciousness, in neither one state nor the other for long until you eventually fall into a deep sleep with the side light on… only to wake up feeling you’ve not had any sleep at all. The pain went for 5 or 6 hours but that was then and this is now. It’s not ambient as such there’s far more going for it to qualify. Beats, drones and processed guitars throughout provide a warm throbbing psychedelic fuzziness. Even the white noise elements of it bring to mind late night analogue TV after broadcasting has finished, whether it’s the perfect accompaniment to a ‘half asleep crywank’ I’ve yet to find out (they think it is though and who am I to argue with that).

It’s a superb album, no doubt. Everything they do is pay what you like on Bandcamp and you can pick up their entire catalogue for what is a very modest amount. Most of their T Shirts have an album download with them as well, there’s even a T that goes with this release. Check it out here…


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