Orange Goblin is a band that I have just recently had the pleasure of listening to, which surprises me as I really enjoy the doom/stoner subgenre of metal. These guys have been around since 1995 when they formed in the UK under the name Our Haunted Kingdom, which was changed to Orange Goblin after they were signed to a label. Frequencies From Planet Ten is their debut album on Rise Above Records. It certainly incorporates a lot of different elements, blending space rock, psychedelic, and of course doom metal to create one heavy and varied album that I have really come to enjoy.

The Astral Project comes in first with some spacey electronic sounds and then the distorted guitars which give it a stoner / space rock feel. The track starts out and a mid-paced tempo and goes into some slower parts which incorporate some psychedelic type lyrics (“Far beyond the universe we know, chasing dreams, it’s to the sun we go”). The song is a bit too long in my opinion, but I do think it gives a good impression on what the rest of the album is about. The next song, Magic Carpet, is a more traditional stoner / doom type song. After some cleaner electric guitar work that sounds inspired somewhat by Jimi Hendrix, the song breaks into a groovy verse that reminds me of something Spiritual Beggars would do. It’s very catchy and has a memorable chorus which made it one of my favorite songs. Saruman's Wish is another great track that starts out with a slow, brooding, early Black Sabbath vibe. About a minute or so later the song breaks out into a faster riff and the clean vocals of Ben Ward, who I must say has just about a perfect voice for this type of music, he also reminds me somewhat of Pepper Keenan. I think he has a good range as he uses some cleaner and some rougher vocals, both of which sound great even though the production does not emphasize them as much as I’d like. One more note about this song, the piano towards the end is somewhat weird, but it grew on me. Song Of The Purple Mushroom Fish is a soft instrumental track that creates a weird, psychedelic atmosphere with the use of clean electric guitars and some distant sounding synths. Land Of Secret Dreams mainly focuses on creating soundscapes with the guitars and drums, mainly focusing on guitars though. The vocals of course play a part in this song, but it seems to me that they are just there to go along with the music, that's how I felt about it anyway. This is the longest track yet, coming it at over seven and a half minutes and like I said there's a good amount of purely instrumental stuff. Halfway through the song there is some creepy, higher pitched vocals along with the usual ones, which I found to be pretty weird but not altogether bad. Orange Goblin might be the heaviest track on the album, starting out with a monster of a riff that continues throughout the song along with some other super-distorted doom metal guitar elements thrown in, reminding me of Cathedral at times. The bass line in this song is great; I couldn't get it out of my head.

I really enjoyed Orange Goblin's approach here as they have plenty of traditional stoner/doom metal elements but they don't come off as a band that wants to just imitate the older, what some might call "retro", bands in the genre. In this respect they remind me somewhat of Spiritual Beggars. In any case these guys know how to write some great songs and they are varied enough to keep one's attention through the entire album. I look forward to listening to more of their work.