Gov't, Mule go beyond grunge to something that might be called sludge: blues-based power-trio expostulations performed at ass-dragging tempos. For guitarist Warren Haynes and bassist Allen Woody, Gov't. Mule used to be a side project – sort of their own Hot Tuna to the Allman Brothers' Jefferson Airplane – but since bailing out of the Allmans last year, it's become their main focus.

You can almost feel the cumbersome yoke they bear as willing apostles of the blues on Dose, their dense and weighty second studio disc. Haynes, Woody and drummer Matt Abts lock horns on longish, wrenching numbers like "Game Face," "Towering Fool," "Blind Man in the Dark" and the descriptively titled "Thorazine Shuffle." Even a cover of the Beatles' "She Said She Said" is given an agonizing slo-mo make over, as Vanilla Fudge might have done it. There's no faulting the playing or the conviction behind it, but on Dose, these stubborn plow mares get mired in a soporific rut as often as they cut a fertile furrow. In other words, its very real pleasures do not come without considerable exertion. (RS 781)

PARKE PUTERBAUGH