The UK Blues Awards Acoustic Artist of the Year, 2021, Northern Irish blues guitarist DOM MARTIN whose “heavy rockin’ vibes, dry ashplant vocals, and sputtering slide guitarwork..” contains an unmistakable soulfulness that brings him favorable comparisons with the much-missed Rory Gallagher, will release his third studio album, titled “Buried In the Hail” via Forty Below Records on 22nd September 2023.
The album was recorded at Golden Egg Studios in Ireland and was produced in Dublin by Grammy-Nominated Chris O’Brien & Graham Murphy and co-produced by Dom Martin.
The artist’s music is heavily influenced by the Roots, Americana, and Blues genres, and many of the songs on his new album have a narrative that is cinematic in nature.
this modern horse opera combines the chrome mentality of a renegade biker with the buckskin-tinged mindset of a loneSome sixgun hillbilly…
Raw Ramp Music Magazine
The album begins with Hello In There, a short piece that was perhaps written about the notion of accepting the gentle storm that blows inside a creator’s mind. As such, it is a sunshiny and somewhat gusty, but cheerful and delicately subtle nonetheless; a fitting cabinet-window for the moonstones of turmoil & bathos that will be glimpsed, soon, inside the darkness.
‘Daylight I Will Find’ is a rumpty-tumpting tromp that transports the listener to the countryside… where each and every woodsman might be a hardscrabble moonshiner or a mudhole fisher. Thus, expect splotched twangs and Dom’s bottomed-out bourbon ‘n’ branch voice, which, on this track, is more hickory-stained & creosote-soaked than an overworked axe-handle; while his guitarwork is as maudlin as a muzzled workdog reclining in the glare of a dying spirit-lamp.
‘Unhinged‘ is brazenly cobwebby with an unapologetically grizzled wirework of crusty guitar notes and gnarled, rather battered vocals that suit the mood so well. The phraseology in the lyrics expresses commitment and hope in the face of a society that is becoming less polite by the hour. Though the song is largely upbeat in messaging. This number has a superior zing of rusty smudge!
“Going deep into your own mind can be dangerous. It can be difficult even to get to the dangerous part, you can get stuck in there…” says Dom, about the title song, Buried In The Hail. And, as you’d expect, there is a jumble of ferruginated sounds that create the atmosphere of the wild frontier. There is also a lot of spice and counterfeit bourbon in the vocal. Ominousness abounds in this modern horse opera that combines the chrome mentality of a renegade biker with the buckskin-tinged mindset of a lonesome sixgun hillbilly.
Overall, this is cookshack of savoury sinewy guitar sounds, sour chewy vocals, and gobs of overt passion. Though take my advice and avoid listening to this while holding hard liquor or a loaded derringer, and you should be fine!
Words: @neilmach 2023 ©
Main Photo Credit: © Tony Cole
Pre-order link: https://www.dommart.in/pre-order
RAW RAMP 