Under The Influence: Bees Made Honey in the Vein Tree

Probably the most style-defining album in shoegaze. We all listened to the album very intensively for a while and the distorted but at the same time beautiful sound certainly left its mark on our music.

For me its definitely the best Electric Wizard album so far. It has everything, heavy doom riffs, rough vocals, but also more quiet atmospheric passages with psychedlic soundscapes, which I dig the most. To get into stoner/doom/psych/atmospheric metal it is a perfect introduction and a big influence.

OM’s bass sound in particular is unsurpassed in its brute force. Also the tonally oriental songwriting is very distinctive. This can also be found on our records in some places.

That may come as a bit of a surprise. But we covered a lot of System of a Down at the very beginning of our band. In fact, this music was very formative due to the constantly changing passages of loud and quiet, fast and slow, beautiful and hard, etc. It definitely left its mark on us.

The use of found recordings, interviews, noise loops and live passages where very inspirational for me. The entire record has a dense atmosphere, at the same time, every song sounds completely different.

A live record from the same period as Soundtracks for the Blind. Somehow even more disturbing than Soundtracks, but showing a raw, live version of similar ideas. Incredible use of male and female vocals.

Mentioning Sleep as an influence in a doom band is obvious, but still right and important! Listening to Sleep‘s Holy Mountain in your teenage years hits different. Fav song: Aquarian.