By all accounts, some albums just shouldn’t work as well as they do. It is both hilarious and puzzling at the same time to me that there can be a whole culture in doom related to anything related to weed but it is far from surprising, and I could honestly give a shit given some of the genre’s best works have come from an obsession over the plant. Some of those records have real nuance to them with an extremely thin veil overtop them from time to time, but that’s far from the case here. On their eponymous debut, Spliffripper takes the idea as far as they can take it to deliver us a performance that’s as fun as it is almost confusingly good.

If you’re anything like me, you both laughed and became far too interested when you see the name Spliffripper. It’s somehow perfect for what’s happening, though! No new ground is broken whatsoever throughout this debut, as you might expect, with all seven tracks here treading the same ground that many stoner records of this vein have covered hundreds of times before, but any single one of us would be incredibly remiss to not mention how well it’s all executed here. There was no way I could’ve been ready for everything that Spliffripper brings to the table here as I initially thought that this would just be another record that brings us a thick slab of stoner metal that has a nasty appearance more than any substance worth digging into and is just there to appease other stoners because weed, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Sure, there are moments throughout this debut that loosely fit that description with much of this performance being nasty with thick stoner metal that cannot be denied but it’s all in a good way that it’s performed, and it’s the humor from within that works far too well with everything else to help make the album a good time in more ways than one as well as immensely entertaining by all accounts. Delivering a performance that competently brings forward smoke-wreathed riffs, occasional heaviness with an oddly fitting Vietnam War flair, humor born out of classic Goofy cartoons where the character is dying for a smoke (ignore the fact he’s talking about cigarettes (“Why’d I quit smoking?! I like smoking! It’s my hobby!!”)), and a staggering understanding of the style that allows the album to become so much more, Spliffripper’s entrance to the scene at large is a truly massive one in every form the likes of which every other stoner act wishes they could achieve for this is a performance that cannot and will not be easily forgotten.

I can’t say for certain whether or not I’ve had a better time listening to a true stoner doom effort more than when I was listening to what Spliffripper did here. Quite literally, I feel that everything that is done within the confines of this debut works far better than it has any right to, and it’s with each proceeding song that Spliffripper delivers a performance that just gets better and better as we go along to have the end of this work become no less than spectacular for anyone that ventures in the dense fog that Spliffripper commands with ease with this album that is the very definition of immense.

“Spliffripper” releases on March 26th via Desert Records!

LISTEN to advanced tracks from “Spliffripper” on Bandcamp here.

LIKE Spliffripper on Facebook here.