III: So Long Suckers＜Colored Vinyl/限定盤＞

Reverend Bizarre made no bones about their plans to disband following the release of this, the group's third long-player, and so it's some small consolation for fans that the aptly named III: So Long Suckers saw the Finnish doom power trio going out, if not on a high note, then with a bang -- literally a BIG bang. Not only did the album require two CDs (the first clocking in at precisely 66:06) to house its bloated 250 minutes' worth of music, but it featured no less than three songs lasting a patently absurd 25 minutes in length. Yet only one of these -- the half-hour opening monolith "They Used Dark Forces/Teutonic Witch" -- really justified the effort, packing more songs-within-its-song than a pod of charging Oliphants has trunks, and arguably trailing only Sleep's historic "Dopesmoker" where sheer girth and multi-part songwriting magnificence is concerned. Sadly, the remaining tandem of "Sorrow" and "Anywhere Out of This World," though peppered with occasional powerful moments and clever ideas, really could have done with some editing, akin with that brought to bear on slightly more restrained (you know, just 12, 15 minutes or so) and coincidentally more successful efforts like "Funeral Summer" and "Caesar Forever." But, as a final pair of bite-sized cuts -- the driving instru-groove "Kundalini Arisen" and the hidden farewell noise collage "Mallorca" -- ultimately prove, the members of Reverend Bizarre were keenly aware of the diminishing provisions of creativity and musical chemistry at their disposal. Or else they wouldn't have decided to call it quits even before So Long Suckers arrived in records stores, leaving a hoard of leftover material for posthumous mini-releases to sift through, along with one of the most impressive and consistent doom discographies of the 2000s. As the band's motto wisely put it: "Doom What Thou Wilt," indeed. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia