Drone/doom metal, to fans and “connoisseurs” of the whole drone movement, Blutch is probably not much of a surprise or a revolutionary band, and to those “conservative” metal fans Materia is just a weird record with too many monotonous riffs.

The album is repetitive and heavy, with thick chugging tunes that in some instances accomplish a nice heavy atmosphere with some memorable riffs, like they do in Burst, definitely the best track on the album; but mostly Materia dwells on a constant drone tune, that becomes exhausting after a couple of songs (a perfect example is Masamune, a 8 minute long track that goes no where!).

This Belgium band despite all my objections, presents an album with a sort of “atmospheric character” emphasizing heaviness, darkness and a bit of paranoia in their drone tunes; all this spiced up with some sludge tempos and hardcore-like vocals that don’t appear very often making you wonder, why do they even though about leaving the vocal part in the first place?

Materia is interesting, but that doesn’t mean is good, like the final “church chorus” segment in which the voices blend on a dark and paranoid progressive ending that yes manages to intrigue me, but after a couple of minutes of the same it takes you to a dead end alley with no surprises.

The album progresses in sounds and in the way it grows and focuses, starting very energetic, very sludgy and active, to slowly loosing intensity, speed and replacing this with drone atmospheres and dark elements.

Maybe my “rating” of the album is not very “knowledgeable” since bands like Sunn o))) are not at all in my rainbow of preferred music, but I still respect the new ideas they bring, and the emphasis on “heavy assertion”; having said that Blutch just make me wonder, Is there something better out there?