While they certainly know how to rock hard, and they've clearly learned a few tricks from Black Sabbath's back catalog, Dead Meadow are the rare stoner rock band who seem only so interested in heavy metal. They clearly appreciate it for its thunder and impact, but the frameworks of the genre are less important to them than the buzzy qualities that link heavy rock with psychedelia. Dead Meadow's embrace of trippy exploration takes center stage on 2022's Force Form Free, an LP they recorded as part of Blues Funeral Records' PostWax subscription series for stoner aficionados. For this project, Dead Meadow delivered six long-ish tracks that came after jamming on new riffs and working out melodic structures they'd toyed with in the past. The tracks have an open-ended quality, focusing less on tunes than simple frameworks that allow the musicians to explore the space around them. This is hardly unusual for Dead Meadow, but Force Form Free feels especially loose-limbed, with most of the numbers lacking vocals to prod them along. This set is also a bit short on guitar heroics from Jason Simon, who's more interested in his keyboards on "Binah," and slips into a minimalist pattern of riffs on most of the tracks, while bassist Steve Kille and drummer Mark Laughlin hold down the bottom end and add subtle texture to the jams. (Fans can take comfort in the knowledge that Simon's love of the wah-wah pedal remains true and makes itself known regularly.) Force Form Free is dominated by songs that take their time going around in a circle, and though this music is long on powerful atmosphere, it feels a lot more aimless than it needs to be, and while loyalists will certainly appreciate Dead Meadow's journey into inner space, casual observers will have a harder time warming to this, as it doesn't stand with their best and most compelling work. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

1		The Left Hand Path
2		The Lure of the Next Peak
3		Valmont's Pad
4		To Let the Time Go By
5		Force From Free
6		Binah

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