View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 2006 Digipak CD release of Phase 3 Thrones And Dominions on Discogs. While Earth 2 pretty much established drone doom as a subgenre and is still cited by many as the only worthwhile album Earth released, Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions is proof that Dylan Carlson is more than a one-trick pony (this would be proved again in 2005 when Earth returned with the fantastic Hex: Or Printing In The Infernal Method).
Earth's master of paranoia and disaster, Dylan Carlson, has long seemed bent on capturing the sound of aggression, displacement, fear, and loathing through the lens of narcotic painkillers. Or so it seems. Throughout the course of Earth's output, Carlson has befuddled listeners with his down-tuned, lengthy excursions into single-note monoliths of songs, his guitar tones droning heavily, hanging menacingly for long spells of time before crashing in slow-motion toward another note or chord progression. The chief problem this time around, as with Pentastar: In the Style of Demons, is that Carlson's gift for writing riffs never fully lifts from the earth. In other words, there are plenty of excellent ideas - stellar, half-written song structures that are never granted the proper completion or percussive accompaniment. There are very few people working like this - save folks like Caspar Brotzmann or the Melvins - with such command of heavy, louder-than-hell guitar playing.
Earth can be frightening, saddening, alienating, peculiar, and more often than not, disappointing. One may listen and wish Carlson would hammer down on that guitar with a complete, vital rhythm section. Patrick Kennedy.