From their website, “Five years into their existence, GROWING HORNS became a bludgeoning force in a dark, brutal and magnificently ugly world. Spawned from an unholy collision of the hulking low-end riff mastery of CROWBAR, the bullish tarmac-tearing of GOATSNAKE and the swampland sludge of DOWN, these mood-stranglers recently released “The Essence of Suffering.” The next level of stoner-infested sludge doom is here and it's Growing Horns!” The album has seven songs, and the title track is first.

It enters with piano notes and spoken words, talking about viewing others as objects. The musical tones are solemn. Low, thick bass notes take over from there with dual harsh vocals intermixed with cleans at times. The entire song feels weighed, and doomy. “Lust for Knife” is another slow, heavy, and lumbering song, where harsh vocals paint a picture of utter desolation. More meaty bass notes accentuate the bottom end. So far, however, they are relying a bit too much on the open E chord as the basis for their sound. “Blood in the Water” begins with tense bass notes and soft drums. It begins to build, and then harsh vocals are unleashed.

“Godvergeten” is faster at first but settles into another lumbering groove once again. It’s not necessarily that the song does not overly excite me, but I just wish the band would move into some unchartered territory. “Dope Fuck” has some opening wah-wah and even some psychedelic elements, but again, the song falls backwards into the same area as the others. They blend too much. “Cutthroat Dimocrisy” might be referring to the modern hypocrisy of politics in the United States. The song however is not overly exciting. “Umbilical Noose (A Tale of Wrath)” is the final song, and it is another heavily riff-driven piece.

The best part of the album for me is those weighted, beefy bass notes, and the times they segue into some psychedelic elements. The bottom line however is that they leaned on open notes too much, and what resulted was an album that tried very hard to get off the ground, but never quite made it.