Robedoor is a group that most Foxy Digitalis readers will be familiar with. Over the past few years they have released some of the finest darkened doom-drone around. They always had a controlled looseness to their music that was hard to define, but just felt so right. I'll gladly admit that I fell in love with this group and grabbed plenty of sonic documents to experience again and again.

So, I was a quite curious to hear that Robedoor was changing things around a little for their latest lp "Raiders". They added the talented Ged Gengras to their lineup and delivered a more thought out, song-structured album that felt like they had abandoned their free-form noise days in favor of minimal psych-rock. I wasn't sold on it at first, but the lp grew on me and I now feel like it's one of their finer works.

So, along comes this little 7" which works as a companion piece to the "Raiders" lp. After spinning it several times, I'm tempted to say that "Pagan Drugs" might be more successful than its long playing brother. The two pieces that make up the 7" seem perfectly suited for this format, encapsulating everything that is great about this band in concise little six minute statements. The thick and distorted churn of these tracks reminds me of old Robedoor, but the structured nature of these songs is definitely reflective of the new approach from the band. The B-side, "Dragon Fang Burnout", contains one of the best melodic builds from the band- releasing endorphins and generally making me feel like I'm on the verge of some epic downer battle. Very cool.

I guess it's the density of these tracks that is more immediately appealing to me. It has that hard to define mood that the duo version of the band was always capable of. If you are new to Robedoor then this is a great place to start. If you're still on the fence about the new direction of the band (like I was), then this will make you a believer. 10/10 -- Charles Franklin (16 February, 2010)