I've tried to come up with the proper analogy for my approach to weighing in on "The End Of Electricity", the latest offering from Swedish Doom/Psych trio DOMKRAFT. See, I solidly dug their 2015 self-titled four-song EP, so was this going to be like hooking back up with an old fling? Revisiting a once-treasured restaurant? Dropping a line in a favorite old fishin' hole? Turns out, it's much more like listening to new material from a band whose first release you found promising. Go figure. I wish I could report that DOMKRAFT built on that promise, expanding their scope and developing their craft, but it feels like, in some pursuit of minimalism, they've regressed-stripping their work of some of the very stuff that made them interesting in the first place. But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's set up what these guys do.

On paper, DOMKRAFT and I should be besties. They namecheck a fair subset of my record collection on their Bandcamp page: HAWKWIND, SPACEMEN 3, NEU!, MONSTER MAGNET, SLEEP, NEUROSIS...LOOP, for crying out loud! Who mentions LOOP these days? DOMKRAFT and I should be taking long walks on the beach, candlelight dinners...and our first date was so neato! (Say, looks like that "old fling" analogy's going to work out after all.) So what changed? Chiefly, it feels like they had enough material for another EP, but stretched it to fill a full-length. Though their EP had two tracks of around ten minutes, the lengths didn't feel forced. On this album, they kick off with the 10½-minute "The Rift" which, though strong and memorable-I dare you not to be repeating "caught in the RIIIIFFFFT" for like an hour after your first listen-it just doesn't quite earn its runtime. I understand that a group like Spacemen 3 would often do fifteen, twenty minutes of essentially the same riff, they knew how to create waves of subtle change across a lengthy piece-and their fuzziness was soothing and womblike, while also crazed and hallucinatory.

DOMKRAFT establish a punishing wall of fuzz and bombast, but seem content to just pound away at it for a while, where on their previous release, they showed a sharp understanding of dynamics. That record had more instrumental interest as well. Bass and guitars seemed to move around each other more. On "The End Of Electricity" everyone seems leery of wandering too far from the root. It's very contained, samey and, I hate to say it, safe. Okay, so let me pull us back from the edge here. This is by no means a bad record. It's massive and droning and occasionally sounds kind of dangerous and that's really cool. Martin Wegeland, while not the strongest pure vocalist out there, has an upper-register plaintive holler that unquestionably evokes some of HAWKWIND's more outer moments. He also harmonizes nicely with the guitar, rising to a third or fourth sometimes against the root of the guitar. I just wish they'd expand more on those moments, or allow more variation to their songs, as they were able to do across just four tracks on their debut.

It's also rather wearying to follow a 10-minute opener with eight minutes! Thankfully, "Meltdown Of The Orb" is a different type of track, featuring a more melodic (albeit hidden under layers of effects) vocal from Wegeland. Again, though, this song at five minutes would get way more love from me than it does at eight, because of the expanse of droney repetition that pads the middle. It never whips into a froth of psychedelic ecstasy, it just goes and goes. Lovely moments I want more of are things like seeming throwaway track "Drones", a tantalizing little minute-and-a-half of vibed-out guitar picking. Unfortunately, that's followed immediately by "Red Lead" which is essentially traced around "The Rift's" template, though mercifully about half the length. They do more of that cool bass/guitar harmonizing on this one, so that's nice. It's a really good droning Doom/Psych number, but it feels like they've been here already. "All Come Hither" establishes a nice tremoloed, late-60s pseudo-eastern motif, but then locks in to the mid-tempo fuzzy bombast again, with the high holler up on top. I challenge this guy to SING on the next album-he might surprise himself! Again, this tune has promise, and it feels like these song styles got more fleshed-out on their previous release.

Now we're on to my favorites, though I really do like "The Rift" (for a while, anyway) and "Red Lead," but I would have separated them. "Dustrider" is two-and-a-half minutes of energy and menace with Wegeland's vocal riding high, at once triumphant and kinda panicky. It repeats one key riff over and over, but varies it slightly along the way, creating interest. Now THAT is how NEU! would do it. That is a song you want to put on a playlist. Closer "We Will Follow" jumps in with mid-tempo and fuzzy bass, then in comes the holler, so you might think "here we go again" but the guitar-bass harmonic interplay hit just right and Wegeland's voice hits just the right edge of desperation-this is DOMKRAFT long-form as it should be. All the droning and repetition of motif are there, it's psychy, and off-putting, but it's also really artfully put together. Truly moving.

So maybe you can't go back again. This album is this album, and what came before is done. We had our fling, we ate that meal, we fished that hole. But the spark of what attracted us is still there. Bottom line: "The End Of Electricity" won't end up on my year-end list. But some songs from it will be with me forever. DOMKRAFT have formidable skills, and this is a solid outing, but they shone so bright the first time, it's perhaps unreasonable to expect this record to hit as hard. I'll still be eagerly awaiting their next one-not to mention their upcoming track on Magnetic Eye's multi-band tribute to PINK FLOYD's "The Wall." I think I still have a pretty heavy crush, even if our timing isn't quite right this go-round.