The funny thing about Raining Fire is that I wasn't planning to spend much time with it.
The first listen did what a lot of stoner and heavy rock records do: threw a pile of riffs at me, sounded perfectly enjoyable, then ended. I figured I had the measure of it.
A couple of days later I put it on again while doing something else and kept getting distracted.
Not by the heaviness. Plenty of bands can do heavy.
It was the little changes.
A song would seem happy sitting in a straightforward groove, then suddenly wander somewhere darker. A guitar melody would show up, hang around for a minute, then disappear before it had fully announced itself. Every time I thought I knew where the record was heading, it shifted slightly sideways.
That's probably why the album grew on me more than I expected.
Sons of Ghidorah clearly enjoy a big riff as much as anybody, but they don't seem particularly interested in repeating the same trick for forty minutes. There are moments where the record leans into doom, others where it feels closer to heavy psych, and a few passages that have an almost melancholy quality underneath all the volume.
The title track is probably the most direct thing here. It doesn't waste time getting started and doesn't pretend to be more complicated than it is. Other songs take a little longer to reveal themselves. A couple barely registered with me on the first run and ended up becoming favourites later.
The guitar work plays a huge role in that. Not because somebody is trying to win an Olympic medal for shredding, but because there are constantly small details floating around the edges of the songs. Sometimes I'd finish a track and realise the thing I remembered most wasn't the main riff at all.
I also like that the record sounds like four people playing together rather than a collection of perfectly edited studio performances. Maybe that's a strange compliment, but a lot of modern heavy rock feels so polished that all the personality gets scrubbed away. Raining Fire still has fingerprints on it.
Not every idea lands equally well. There are a few stretches where I found myself waiting for a section to go somewhere unexpected and it never quite happened. But those moments never lasted long enough to become a problem.
What surprised me most is that the album never became background music.
I tried.
Every time I put it on while answering emails or doing something around the house, I'd eventually catch myself paying attention again.
That's usually a sign that a record has more going on than it first appears.
