Two years on from “A Sinner’s Past,” the Los Angeles quintet Early Moods return with their third full-length, “Ready For The Grave,” on RidingEasy Records. The arc that brought them here is neither long nor unremarkable in the scheme of the genre: a self-released EP, “Spellbound” (2020), a self-titled debut (2022), and the aforementioned second album, stitched together by a five-piece that has, by now, carved a recognisable niche in the American Doom/Heavy circuit. Alberto Alcaraz anchors the front with a baritone that never quite soars but always presses, Eddie Andrade and Oscar Hernandez twin the guitars, Elix Feliciano lays down a low, tectonic bass line, and Chris Flores drives the rhythm section with a mechanical, behind-the-beat precision that gives the band its forward lurch. The live résumé reads like a curriculum in its own right — shared bills at Desertfest, support slots for Candlemass, Pentagram, High On Fire, and Pagan Altar — and the material on this record carries the unmistakable residue of those stages. The sonic palette remains rooted in the classical Doom canon: the weight of Black Sabbath, the angular aggression of Pentagram, the Sludgy interplay of Trouble, the dirgic grandeur of Candlemass, yet it is filtered through a NWOBHM tempo sensibility and a Budgie-like restlessness that keeps the proceedings from ever settling into mere monotone. The decisive step forward, however, lives in the production. Engineer and producer Tosh Kasai, whose résumé spans the Melvins and Tool, shaped the record at Sound of Sirens Recording Studio and Cyan Sound Studio, with Brad Boatright handling mastering and Mariusz Lewandowski delivering a cover image of appropriately funereal gravity. Kasai‘s contribution extends well beyond the mixing desk: he appears as a multi-instrumentalist across four tracks, weaving in keys, banjo, theremin, and backing vocals. The result is a record that translates, with uncommon fidelity, the kinetic, almost feral energy of an Early Moods live set into a fixed medium, without sanding down the edges. The title-track “Ready For The Grave” hits without preamble: a driving, interlocked rhythm figure over which the guitars trade jagged, Fuzz-saturated riffs in rapid succession. The tempo is brisk by Doom standards, the feel squarely in the Budgie corridor, with the harmonic darkness of the Dehumanizer era of Black Sabbath bleeding through the chord choices. Lyrically, the song circles the seduction of decay, the refrain “Dark forces calling out my name / Forever ready for the grave” lands with a blunt, almost liturgical finality. The close is the track’s payoff: a clean, distorting call-and-response between Andrade and Hernandez that ratchets the energy just before the needle drops to silence. In “Inquisition” the pace drops to a grinding, monolithic quarter-note pulse. Both guitars settle into tight palm-muted chugs that build a slow, sustained pressure, released only in brief swells of open strings and feedback that hang in the mix like dust in a shaft of light. The thematic content is sharper than the sonic surface suggests: the lyrics confront prevarication and territorial dispossession, a subtext that, in the current political climate, reads as pointedly timely. The closing couplet — “Who’s to say my gods aren’t real? … It’s time to burn in hell,” lands with the weight of a verdict rather than a hook. In structural terms, the track functions as a Doom-weighted answer to what might otherwise be a straightforward NWOBHM gallows song, and the contrast broadens the album’s register considerably. The first full foray into Epic Doom territory, “Thy Eternal Grief” where the arrangement opens with a sustained, half-time figure over which Alcaraz’s vocals stretch into a register of controlled anguish. What elevates the track above mere genre pastiche is the layered backing vocal work of Tosh Kasai: his harmonies sit just behind the lead line, adding a thickness and a spectral quality that make the chorus feel less like a hook and more like a dirge being sung by two voices at slightly different tempos. The tempo never accelerates; the tension is carried entirely by dynamics and the slow unfurling of the guitar phrases. At just over four minutes, “The Prowler” is the album’s most concise statement, and its most surprising. Kasai‘s banjo enters in the second verse, its plucked, percussive attack clashing deliberately with the distorted guitar tones. The effect is not pastoral so much as uneasy, an acoustic instrument forced into a context of metallic weight, producing a friction that keeps the listener’s ear alert. The rhythm section never loosens; the banjo sits inside the groove rather than replacing it, and the track’s forward momentum remains intact. It is a small, confident risk, well executed. A more architecturally complex composition, “When Light Fades,” built on deliberate shifts in register and volume. The arrangement breathes: passages of dense, mid-tempo riffing give way to sparser, near-ambient sections where Kasai‘s keys fill the upper register with sustained, slightly detuned pads. The interplay between the warm, analog colour of the keyboard work and the abrasive guitar tones creates a textural duality that tracks the song’s title, light present, then diminishing, then gone. It is the album’s most explicitly atmospheric piece, and it rewards patient listening. The occult register of the band’s thematic vocabulary comes to the fore in “Her Wicked Spells,” and the production matches. Kasai‘s theremin threads through the arrangement in long, gliding phrases that cut against the heavy, Sabbath-derived riffing below. The effect is theatrical without being overwrought: the instrument’s characteristic wobble and overtone shimmer lend an aura of ritualistic unease, as though something in the room has shifted temperature. The structure is comparatively straightforward, but the timbral contrast carries the track forward, and the final bars allow the theremin to fade while the guitars sustain one last, unresolved chord. A near-eight-minute suite and the album’s structural centrepiece, “Ashes Of The Damned,” closes the tracklist. Feliciano‘s bass line is the spine: deep, melodic, and deceptively simple, it grounds the piece even as the guitars and vocals range further afield. A mid-section interlude, a brief, almost folk-tinged melodic passage, offers a moment of release before the tempo reasserts itself and the riffing tightens for the final stretch. The track was reportedly shaped during the studio sessions rather than arriving fully formed, and that sense of organic development is audible: each section feels earned, the transitions motivated by momentum rather than formula. It closes the record with a weight and a finality that feel genuinely conclusive. “Ready For The Grave” is, in the most useful sense of the word, a finished album. The writing is assured without being self-satisfied; the arrangements show a band that knows where to push and, more importantly, where to hold back. Kasai‘s production is the quiet engine of that confidence: it captures the physicality of a live performance, the drum hits that land in the sternum, the guitar tone that occupies the room, while giving the band space to exploit dynamic range in ways the previous record, “A Sinner’s Past,” did not quite permit. The balance between classicism and experimentation is well judged. The Sabbath/Pentagram/Triple-A DNA is never merely replicated; it is interrogated through tempo, through the insertion of instruments that have no obvious place in a Doom context (a banjo, a theremin), and through a vocal approach that favours grim declaration over melodic prettiness. For listeners who want their Heavy/Doom to carry the weight of tradition while still feeling like it is going somewhere, this is a record that delivers without asking for permission. If you have followed Early Moods through the Desertfest circuit or caught them supporting the acts named above, this record will not surprise you, it will confirm you, and that is rarer than it sounds. And if you have not, the seven tracks here are more than sufficient to make the case. Put it on loud, let the low end rattle the floorboards, and give it the attention it deserves. The live version, as anyone who has seen them will attest, is simply more of the same energy, undimmed.
Tracklist
01. Ready For The Grave (04:47)
02. Inquisition (06:03)
03. Thy Eternal Grief (06:18)
04. The Prowler (04:06)
05. When Light Fades (06:30)
06. Her Wicked Spells (06:00)
07. Ashes Of The Damned (07:44)
Lineup
Alberto Alcaraz / Vocals
Eddie Andrade / Guitar
Oscar Hernandez / Guitar
Elix Feliciano / Bass
Chris Flores / Drums
Additional Contributors:
Tosh Kasai / Keys on “When Light Fades“; Banjo on “The Prowler“; Theremin on “Her Wicked Spells“; Backing Vocals on “Thy Eternal Grief“