CHEST, MMXI  (2011, self-released)

The skull:
And lo did Skull #500 find enlightenment at long last. Floating through the desert for nigh on 17 turns ’round the sun seeking purpose in his bodiless purgatory, and presently teetering on total astral burnout, skull 500 finally felt deep pangs of hunger. So did his search lead him, if only for a moment, toward something perhaps even more existential than the meaning of death, purgatory and the afterlife. With considerable surprise he did find the Lophophora williamsii cactus plant, or peyote, before him, dried in buttons and begging to be consumed. “It is kismet that I should stumble upon such heavenly bread!” said he as he ingested the buttons. In short time, he fell into a rapturous mescaline haze. Not only did it satisfy his pangs, but it achieved in him a vertigo hitherto unexperienced by man, beast or skull. He could not remember how or why he was crowned king those many years ago, or even what land he ruled, but screw it, he hadn’t a speck of care about any of that now. “How much of that shit did I eat???” he wondered. His name is Chester, King Chester, and he is absolutely wigging the fuck out.

The music:
There is precious little to report on here. Finland’s Chest play serviceable, standard-issue stoner rock/sludge, utterly adequate and likely reaching the low bar that freaks for this kind of stuff “demand” of their bonged-out leaders. But for anyone wanting a new, different, memorable, worthwhile or (gasp) adventurous musical experience, look elsewhere. Where Queens of the Stone Age are the Mensa wizards on high, come from a far distant planet to enslave us with their majesty, Chest are the couch potatoes scraping the bowl for remnants of smoke-able resin as they bicker about who has to venture into the outside world to secure the next batch of Cheetos and Mellow Yellow.
— Friar Wagner