A mashup of stoner, doom, and sludge metal comes in the form of "Miasmic Purple Smoke" from Michigan's BOG WIZARD. However, they prefer the term "nerd doom."

I always wonder about doom/stoner/sludge metal bands and their decision-making when it comes to how long a song should be. They're known for often creating significantly longer songs than your average three or four minute listen, but then every once in a while they'll throw in a song or two that's under two minutes and that's exactly what BOG WIZARD does with "Grimdark" and "Stuck in the Muck." I also find that oftentimes when listening to really long songs, it's hard to tell that the song hasn't changed, because they tend to switch things up musically quite a bit.

"Grimdark" is just a one minute and 47 second instrumental song of slow, ominous guitars. I often wonder why stuff like this gets included on an album. What is the purpose? Especially when nothing particularly musically profound is happening. "Stuck in the Muck," however, is at least a fast-paced song with lyrics (nothing against instrumentals) and seems to fit into the album better.

I absolutely love how funky the title track "Miasmic Purple Smoke" starts off and I definitely think this is the best song on the album. Even the vocals get changed up from the typical doominess, but it still holds a lot of the qualities while offering something really different from the rest of the album. This is a great jam song and I think this one really shows off vocalist Ben Lombard's talents. I would have liked more songs like it on the album.

What I like about the last song "The Void Beckons" is that in the beginning it does sound like you're being pulled by some unignorable powerful force to be sucked into the void. The synths create a spacey effect and the vocals have a sedative, far away effect. The first half of the song is very slow and dragging. At 12 minutes and 27 seconds long, this song is very slow paced and honestly, it just drags. I kept waiting for it to speed up or for some kind of really interesting thing to happen, but it never does. I really think they could have shortened this one up a bit as it made me a little sleepy.

This is a doomy musical effort worth spacing out to if you're into the genre and have a thing for lengthy songs.