Andrew Danso

It’s easy to discount retrograde remakes as nothing but laboured nostalgia, but it’s incredibly important for fans to feel that sense of time warp every now and then – not least to remind them how far their chosen genre leaps forward year after year. The genre in question is doom, with Obrero being a Swedish stoner rock band, focused on recreating that 70s sludge which helped define a trendy blueprint, decades on. Mortui Vivos Docent (the dead teach the living) is obviously not meant to be an innovator, but in reliving the past, it conveys that smoke-filled, grimy atmosphere, which characterised 70s rock sensationally. It’s also crammed full of well-crafted arrangements, that are executed with as much edge as one could squeeze from a late 90s tweed amplifier.

7/10 Powerplay issue #137