Band:	Bees Made Honey In The Vein Tree
Album:	Aion
Style:	Psychedelic doom metal
Release date:	August 2023

01. Aion
02. Divergence
03. Threatening
04. Consonance
05. Courtyard
06. Excavation
07. Scouring The Land
08. Grey Wels

Grandmother, Bees Made Honey In The Vein Tree’s 2019 release, very much went under the radar; I discovered it too long after its release date to give it a proper review, although not too late to propose it for the Metal Storm Awards, which ultimately resulted in it winning the 2019 Stoner Metal Staff Pick. Hopefully, Aion will gain a bit more traction than its predecessor, because this is a fantastic step forward for the group.

If this is to be a significant breakthrough album, it won’t be through accessibility; Aion is a CD-stretching 80 minutes long. Now, I’m prone to criticizing a record for overstaying its welcome, but ultimately, whether an album justifies its runtime often comes down to more than just pure length; there’s 40-minute albums that stretch, and 80-minute records that offer joy throughout. Still, given the abundance of stoner doom on the market, the execution is going to have to be pretty special to warrant listening to a single album in the style of over 80 minutes rather than any of the competition. As it turns out, the execution on Aion is somewhat special, but it’s also an album that can’t simply be pigeonholed into the ‘stoner doom’ niche.

Briefly jumping back to Grandmother, the term ‘stoner doom’ felt fairly apt there; the songs were by and large slow, and frequently very heavy, with lurching stoner doom riffs, only a degree or two below Green Druid in sinister density. On top of that, there were creepier ‘quiet’ passages with sustained distortion and feedback used to build atmosphere, as well as occasional dabblings in softer psychedelic rock. The above still is relevant for Aion, but this record perhaps is less stoner and more psychedelic, and it certainly feels like it spends more time in atmospheric environs rather than heavier fuzzy riffs.

Bees Made Honey In The Vein Tree certainly still can be heavy; the 12-minute title track has dizzying psych-rock soloing and powerful, lumbering walls of fuzz. However, before then, there’s a prolonged atmospheric introduction; stripped-down beginnings with soft, distant ethereal cleaning gradually build, with tribalistic percussion, shimmering tremolos, and progressive intensification of the sound... wait, is this a post-metal song? Not entirely, but post-metal, while perhaps being detectable in the DNA of Grandmother, is clearly a far more prominent component this time around.

Post-metal and stoner metal have crossed over a few times in recent years, whether it be Somali Yacht Club’s subdued melancholia or Methadone Skies’ dynamic jams. I would say that what Bees Made Honey In The Vein Tree have created on Aion is arguably closest to the fusion attempted by Sunnata on albums such as Outlands and Zorya, with a bit more aggression in the heavier parts and more esoteric textures in the atmospheric moments. However, tribal drum-dominated elongated builds such as in the latter half of “Threatening” arguably veer closer to ritualistic post-metal such as Pothamus.

I’ve not been shy about my appreciation of post-metal on this site; however, I don’t just love Aion because it’s got more post-metal. What makes this album so good is how well it does everything, and how well all of it fits together at a combined journey. “Divergence” really dives into the heavier, slower, trudging stoner/doom, with ponderous mammoth riffs and slick grooves, but the marching snare motif and gradually collapsing distortion in the second half is such an unexpected take on the style. “Threatening” initially recapitulates so much of what made Grandmother so effective, with the bruising mid-tempo dense riffs, eerie clean guitar leads and hazy vocals, but the aforementioned twist into percussion-driven atmospherics later on is incredibly well-executed.

If anything, the album becomes even more captivating as it progresses. “Excavation” perhaps isn’t the most notable song, but its descent from clean, mystical beginnings to grim, venomous depths is intriguing, and sets a solid platform for the closing duo, which between them run for over half an hour. The shorter of these is “Scouring The Land”, a laid-back psych-rock jam with warm grooves tinted with a hint of melancholia, which nevertheless pushes the intensity in key moments, culminating in a rousing, rolling stoner rock outro. Arguably the piece de resistance on Aion, however, is 21-minute closer “Grey Wels”. Despite an intimidating opening built on distant, colossal-sounding noise, it eventually shifts into delicate psychedelia, as tribal drumming, clean guitar tones and hazy psychedelic vocals give off a very hippie-esque vibe. As the song progresses, it evolves into something akin to Elder at their most tranquil (think Omens), with lush guitar arrangements and textures, before everything gets sucked into a black hole of crushing distortion to bring the album to a close.

Aion is a consummate demonstration of how to make an 80-minute album that keeps you engaged throughout; the songcraft of Bees Made Honey In The Vein Tree, and their ability to explore sound, space and texture, turns the album into such a compelling experience. It’s not perfect; “Excavation” is a level or two below the rest of the songs here, and some might find the double-header of interludes “Consonance” and “Courtyard” to be a bit indulgent (although I like what they contribute to the record). I sometimes wonder whether my enthusiasm for Grandmother when I first discovered it owed something to being released in 2019, which was a pretty underwhelming year for releases on the whole. However, I’m very confident that Aion sounds fantastic because it is fantastic, regardless of context.