��Here's the latest solo offering from groovelord Al Cisneros, bassist/vocalist for hypno-heavies Om and former member of stoner/sludge metal icons Sleep and Asbestosdeath. He's been putting out these terrific EPs of dub-based music over the past year or so that, while moving away from the lumbering heaviness of his main projects, are still traced with plenty of darkened delirium. Cisneros has made a career out of crafting monstrous, meditational grooves, and on Toward Nazareth he melds that sound with some immensely deep dub that'll lull you into a trance in no time. This sort of experimentation with dub is no surprise for anyone who's been following his other bands over the years, as dub influences even made their way into the more psychedelic moments from Sleep, but here he crafts five tracks of menacing groove that strips everything down to a rhythmic skeletal throb, all drifting through a thick opium cloud of mystical ambience, the connection to classic Jamaican dub muted and mutated into something more contemporary and psychedelic, with the tracks on each side all sharing elements of a common bass line that evolves from piece to piece.

�� The massive gothic hypno-dub of the title track is up first, weaving it's reverb-cloaked strings into eerie, vaguely Middle Eastern folk-drones that tumble across the subdued boom-bap of the drums and the deep, resonant burble of the bass, while spectral synth noises whir across the expansive groove. Early on, Cisneros imbues his sound with a laid-back, languid vibe and shadowy presence that's somewhat comparable to Return Of Black September-era Muslimgauze. The moody hook and vast psychedelic drift of "Indica Field" is one of the record's more memorable tracks, rich with a subdued, twilight ambience that shifts into an equally mesmeric wash of deep echoing dub bliss on "Harvester Dub". The two b-side tracks slip into heavier, more lumbering grooves, with the meditative "Yerushal�yim" sounding remarkably like a dub remix of an Om track with its droning circular bass riffage winding around the echoing snare and propulsive percussive backbeat, waves of echoing drum hits rippling over the stoned trance. That's followed by a slightly industrial tinged variant of that groove, the drums given a heavy, vaguely mechanical edge, the sound almost Scorn-like, but still utterly etheric and mesmerizing. Comes in plain, die-cut DJ style cardboard sleeve on heavy Kraft stock.