For ardent disciples of stoner rock, Pagan Altar’s appropriately titled Time Lord is akin to Lazarus rising from the dead. Formed in 1976, the London-based quintet was one of the very first New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands to play doom metal. Pagan Altar recorded these songs in 1978, but for reasons unknown the master tapes were shelved until 34 years later. Finally released in 2012, “Highway Cavalier” plays like Jim Dandy fronting Motörhead before the title track launches into the space-rock stratosphere for more than eight minutes of power sludge. It borrows equally from Hawkwind’s interstellar instrumentals and early Black Sabbath’s hard-throttled overdrive, as frontman Terry Jones croons with a voice tainted with smoke and whiskey. “Judgment of the Dead” dials down the tempos and cranks up the amp distortion to create heavy-lidded dirges that compete with 747 jet turbines for decibel levels. Similarly, “Black Mass” delivers a sonic avalanche played at a lumbering pace to rock like a funeral dirge for Viking giants. The guitar work by Alan Jones and Vince Hempstead creates a titanic tug-of-war before “Reincarnation” imports Celtic folk arpeggios. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.