[ aquarius records — Metal Stoner Doom ]

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There's been a lot of activity lately from these semi-legendary lords of doom, surprising coming from a band that's been around for about thirty years and has dwindled down to only two members! But (thankfully for all fans of dark, doomy heavy metal)

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While we're eagerly looking forward to the upcoming documentary movie, Last Days Here, about the last ditch whowouldathunkit rebound of doom legend, Bobby Liebling's drug-damaged life and career, there's also now this new live dvd of footage from his band Pentagram's recent tour to demonstrate that, yes indeed, the seemingly ancient frontman Bobby L and the 'Ram gang are BACK, miraculously in fine form, a bug-eyed Bobby strutting like the glammed-up, gramped-out Ozzy/Iggy hybid he (somewhat grotesquely, but amazingly) is. Featuring classic Pentagram trax like "Day Of Reckoning", "20 Buck Spin", "Sign Of The Wolf", "Relentless", "Forever My Queen", and the title track, amongst others. This was shot at the 2010 Maryland Deathfest, and crucially, features the return of guitarist Victor Griffin, the riffmaster on Pentagram's first 3 official albums, from which these songs are drawn. Also, on bass, Greg Turley (Place Of Skulls) and on drums, Gary Isom (Spirit Caravan). Nothing here by the way from the subsequently recorded Last Rites album that Metal Blade released in 2011, an excellent effort also featuring Griffin.

This is really not new at all, and we had been holding out for the cd import version for ages, but then realized we still had never gotten it in, and thus had never listed this record at all, even though we've had a stack of the Southern Lord vinyl edition sitting here all this time, and it is pretty awesome, so we just decided to list it anyway, import compact disc be damned, so here it is, better late than never, the debut from Pentemple, which for those of you who have somehow missed out on this, is essentially a SUNNO))) record, as it features the core duo of Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson, frequent SUNNO))) collaborators Oren Ambarchi and Attila Csihar, with the addition of the mysterious Sin Nanna of mighty one man black metal horde Striborg! Needless to say, SUNNO))) fans will dig the shit out of this, two long 20+ minute tracks, each thick and slow and heavy and drone-y, the guitars not riffing so much as crawling like some black fog, and some seriously fucked up vox, feral mewling gives way to distant moaning, strange chanting tangled up with hellish shrieks and guttural growls, all draped over a constantly shifting blackened doomscape, it takes nearly seven minutes for the drums to kick in, but when they do, it changes the whole feel of the record, chaotic, abstract, very free, suddenly it sounds like free jazz SUNNO))), or SUNNO))) covering Coltrane or Ayler or something, whatever it is, it's really rad, a buzzing free form doom jazz that sprawls and oozes, splatter and hums, the two pieces are part of a bigger whole, by the second movement, it's all about the drums, now locked into a lurching stuttery rhythm, and the vocals, growing in intensity, the whole sound thickening and expanding, until the drums peter out, leaving 6 or 6 minutes of super thick, layered gristled and corrosive buzz, that manages to be super heavy but super hypnotic and dreamy at the same time before finishing off with a little melodic tangle at the end, still wreathed in hazy heaviness and a thick cloud of crumbling fuzz. Killer packaging too, with the front cover image of the crowned goat hoof black on black and embossed so you can feel the grimness...

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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY.

Killer ep from this one man US funeral avant doom outfit. The sound here veers wildly from tripped out doom-ed psychedelic experiments to moody post rocky instrumentalism to bizarre drum machine flecked drone plod, and yeah, finally to some buzz drenched bizarre doom. And bizarre it is. Of the four tracks here, only one is actually doom metal all the way through, and even then, it's fractured and fucked up and freaky as all get out. Makes sense that this was released on the same label that gave us a recent Gnaw Their Tongues release, as PiM are definitely another obtuse doom metal variant, and we LOVE it. The opening track begins with some classical guitar, draped over distant cacophonies, and fluttery flute, glitched out electronic buzz, clouds of swirling effects, strange detuned melodies, thick slabs of corrosive buzz, anguished wails, before the second track kicks in and the band pound out a slow motion doom crawl, the distortion brittle and crumbling, the vocals in the red and hyper distorted, in fact, all the sounds are super blown out, and then near the end, some weird way up in the mix acoustic guitars drift in, as the doom pounds on beneath. Then comes a brief instrumental interlude, all gentle piano, simple guitar strum, and some obtuse, slightly out of tune slow motion leads, until the doom drops, and the song lurches woozily toward the final track, a warped dronescape, all whirring electronic low end, distorted voices transmitted beneath some rubbery bass, so detuned you can hear the strings rattling against the frets, and then out of nowhere, some super primitive drum machine surfaces, its stilted machinelike skitter, draped over the throbbing buzzing electronics below, so bizarre, and so brilliant. We tried to order a bunch of these, but only managed to get a handful, limited to 100 copies, packaged in cool mini dvd sleeves, with full color artwork, each one hand numbered, last copies ever.

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Latest blast of twisted druggy slo-mo heaviness from this Oakland outsider doomlord, whose sound seems to have reached some sort of bizarre apex with Confessions, the first song alone tells the tale, plonked funeral piano, all manner of sampled voices, the vocals a demonic shriek, the riffs blackened and buzzy, what sounds like crickets, beneath spidery minor key melodies, it's haunting and harrowing, almost like a more 'musical' Gnaw Their Tongues, the same sort of sprawling cinematic vibe, the sound weirdly industrial too, an ominous creep, that in places reminds us of Wolf Eyes. And the whole record pretty much follow suit, like some twisted soundtrack, the sound a bleak, miserable drift through various horrifying tableaus, the voices croon, weep, howl, the piano seems to underpin it all, some mysterious bit of miserable melodicism, underpinning the grinding, buzzing blackness above, the sounds coalescing into riffs here and there, laced with spidery acoustic guitars, occasionally splintering into metallic shards, clattery and cacophony, blown out and blackened, all the while, strangely melodic, utterly haunting, definitely noisy, but muted and muddy, as if these sonic horrors were being viewed through a dirty blood smeared window, in a dilapidated old house, or through a crack in the wall of an old musty cellar. And it's almost as if all of these sounds, and all of this music, was fighting some unseen black force, an invisible hand reaching from the beyond, the music in a constant state of struggle, of anguish, the sound of a tortured soul, a sonic glimpse into the blackness that lurks beneath the everyday, a sound desperately clawing its way heavenward, while some grim force forever drags it right back down into the depths� WAY recommended for fans of Gnaw Their Tongues, Bunkur, Celestiial, HQO, Loss, Monument Of Urns and other purveyors of bizarre bleak blackness. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!

The other day a mail order customer called up and ordered Finnish post-rockers Circle's tUMULt release "Andexelt", and also "Ciudad de Brahman" by Argentinian stoner-rock outfit Natas. I immediately suggested that he also get a copy of this debut cd by

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Whoo-hoo! Hypnotic as ever, here's the third studio album (and fourth disc overall counting the live Battle Of The Axehammer) from Circle's so-called (by us) "stoner rock" side-project. Well now we'd have to say that stoner rock tag is a bit inaccurate, an oversimplication. I mean, we were kinda hoping they'd always stay "heavy" but I think that they're not so much "the stoner rock version of Circle" now, than they are simply a stripped down, instrumental Circle with more psych guitar action. Very very krauty. This actually actually sounds a lot like Salvatore, as much as Circle, for that matter. Which is most definitely a good thing! Stacked up alongside the rest of Pharaoh Overlord's albums, it's not so dark as II, not so fried and blown-out as Battle, and probably comes closest to #1. And it's definitely something stoners are still gonna dig, but while they do heavy it up riff-wise sometimes, the psych aspect is laid-back and mellow just as much. Can you imagine the vibe of that last Dead Meadow mixed with a Circle style rhythmic pulse? This is all about tracks like opener "Test Flight", a druggy ten minute psych-jam, or track three, an epic, but almost funkily tight number called "Laivius 17", that builds up over 13 minutes and 13 seconds, getting more and more psych-guitar-skronked until it snaps -- into track four, "Autobahn", nothing but a droning, distorted guitar-burn solo. It's ten minutes but I wouldn't mind it for a whole album! That then swivels into the tick-tock, low-key groove of "Octagon". Very Can, that one. And on it goes... If only Pharaoh Overlord/Circle could come up with a way to make their cds automatically repeat when they reach the end, that would utterly satisfy the Circle aesthetic. Of course, you, the listener, will probably want to hit play again, but that's assuming you're not too zoned out to move your arm.

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Another one to file under "NWOFHM"! New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal. That's Pharaoh Overlord/Circle bassist Jussi's little joke. Only now it's gone waaaaay beyond joking. Or to another level of joke anyway. What we're saying, is that this fourth Pharaoh Overlord opus is a headbanger's delight, for real. Sure, Pharaoh Overlord were already supposed to be the "heavy" Circle side project, and they were, but not like this. This ain't mere 'stoner rock', this doesn't sound anything like Kyuss anymore. Instead, they've adopted chugging speed metal riffage that could be from an Accept album circa 1984, lashed it to their usual repetitive krautrocky rhythms, unleashed some very metal vocals, and gone entirely over to the dark side (which, by the way, is the title of one of our favorite tracks here, the album-ending 8+ minute instrumental epic that just drives a mean riff into your brain like the spiked fist thru the face of the skull in the cd booklet!!)). They even snuck a little umlaut in over the 2nd 'o' in 'Overlord' on the spine of this cd. Circle (and Pharaoh Overlord at this point have pretty much the exact same lineup as Circle, it's basically the same band) have dropped big hints about their love of metal before -- making references in their graphics and in their music, with many tracks on such albums as Sunrise and Tulikoira being pretty darn metal, as we've noted before -- but here they go whole hog. They sound less like a spacerock band who want to give a nod to metal with a riff here and there, than like a really weird actual metal band! It's rifftastic, hypnotic biker metal with a strange psychedelic side to it. And best of all -- it works! It's a high concept success (and as we mentioned, they've been seemingly high on this concept before, but never have been this tight with it). The unpredictable predictability of any Circle or Circle-related album, their basic kraut-inspired, "circular" formula, stands up to and indeed seems to embrace this metallic obsession. The tick-tock percussion and cyclical riffs just wind up tension, even as they entrance the listener, making this so very heavy and ominous in a way that maybe no other metal band would or could explore but they'd have to appreciate. AMAZING!! Can Jussi and Co. get any more metal than this? Well soon we'll see when we get the upcoming Circle cdep Earthworm which features Bruce Duff from '80s alt-metal band Jesters Of Destiny on vocals! Supposed to be pretty darn heavy. Stay tuned.

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Yay. Pharaoh Overlord is the all-instrumental so-called "stoner rock" side project of our favorite Finns, Circle. Now they're back, with the aptly titled "II", and a new line-up that's apparently all members of Circle. Interestingly, while Circle themselves went kinda metal with "Sunrise", Pharaoh Overlord seem to have have mellowed out. Well not quite, as track 4 amps up the riffs a bit. But you'd be hard pressed to call this "stoner rock" anymore. It's more like a really relaxed Circle, still "heavy" but in a way that has less to do with being loud than being low (a bit like them other AQ-faves Bohren and Der Club Of Gore). Repetitive trance-inducing space rock, all deep, rumbling, and spacious. A real nod-scene. Metronomyic drums, meandering guitars, six long tracks of minimal, mellow menace. Even darker and dubbier than their first album. Definitely dubbier. But still totally psychedelic. Goes well with the disc Argentine stoner rockers Los Natas recorded for Circle's label Ektro, "Toba-Trance". And Circle fans will of course be pleased -- we're reminded of Circle's "Paint It Black" cover... Lovingly packaged courtesy of No Quarter, a label also responsible for some excellent releases from the likes of Earth and Laddio Bollocko.

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Bow down, people. Just bow down. If extended, repetitive, droned-out krauty stoner prog a la Circle is your thing, then this disc definitely for you, surprise surprise. Sheer hypnosis. Utterly mesmeric. Sounds sooooooooooooo gooooooooooood. It's hard to think of these guys as just a band, the music here seems produced by some organic force. It's a living thing really. A throbbing monster of an album. Just like their sister band Circle, of which they're all members, Finnish psychsters Pharaoh Overlord have built a discography (they're up to six albums now, counting this one) that somehow maintains a core identity yet always does something different each time out. They started off with the stoner rock riff mantras of #1, then went to the mostly subdued noirishness of II, followed that with the live-and-raw Battle Of The Axehammer, then came back with the krautrockingly Circle-like diversions of #3, all before delving into the absurdly headbanging metallisms of #4 that even added vocals to their previously instrumental lineup. So, now what? What next? A second live album, this time called Live In Suomi Finland, recorded in Helsinki in May of 2006. On it the regular Pharaoh Overlord lineup of Jussi, Tomi and Janne is augmented by two more Finnish friends, and special guest Hans Joachim Irmler of legendary krautrockers Faust! His electric organ grind here adds an extra dose of distorted drone to the proceedings. Of the two live PO discs this is definitely the best sounding. It's not as raw and blown-out as Battle Of The Axehammer, it's got better fidelity, but if anything it's even heavier!! Perhaps its the additional "remixing" credited to Irmler, whatever magic he worked in later in the Faust studio definitely makes this more than "just" a live album. There's five tracks here, though it's a very continuously flowing disc... starting with the infectious riffery of "Black Horse" (which has appeared previously only in another live version on Battle Of The Axehammer), followed by two totally new tracks, "Tutankharmony" and "Zero Gravity" that relax the volume and mood a bit with a sense of smokey, improv mystery. Then they launch into "Skyline", the heaviest cut from II, before winding up / blowing out with a quarter-hour rendition #1's "Mangrove". An incredible 50+ minutes all told. Boy, we wish we'd been there! Too bad SF-Helsinki flights aren't quick or cheap...

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Finland's Pharaoh Overlord return with this devastating double lp on Aaron Turner and Faith Coloccia's vinyl-only Sige label. Whilst we have many favorite Finns, these guys (and their mothership Circle) are among our very favoritest. Yours too probably, so we imagine these are gonna fly out of here fast. This Circle sideproject is certainly VERY "circular" here, full of repetitive minimalist vibrations to the max, utter stoner neo-kraut hypnosis for sure, with a heavy metallic undercurrent and some freaky cosmic jazziness to it too. Of the couple most recent previous PO efforts, Lunar Jetman aligns more closely with the space/noise rock of live lp Horn, rather than the "song-ier" classic metal of Out Of Darkness, harking back also to the dark stoner soundscapes of some of their earlier albums as well; but as always, it is its own entity. Lunar Jetman features six tracks, mostly quite long, sprawling over four album sides, for far more than an hour of slow burning, steady building, all-instrumental Overlord action. The album begins with the insistent gallop of the nearly 11 minute long "Rodent", which almost sounds like Maiden gone motorik! With extra spaceage shoegazey shwooshing and wooshing thrown in. It'll have you totally transfixed before it's even half over. The distortodelic kraut-iness continues amidst the metronymic percussive percolations of the even-lengthier track two, "Palmyra Cali"; then "Cardinal" is a much shorter, blissed out improv-sounding interlude. That's followed by the 16+ minutes of "Black Horse", at long last a studio version of a composition earlier documented in briefer versions on both PO's 2004 live album The Battle Of The Axehammer, and then again on 2007's Live In Suomi. Here, it begins with much skitter and skree, before hammering into the happy heavy churning riffage we recognize. This one's definitely bound to be a fave of all the Wooden Shjips' fans out there. Finally, Lunar Jetman delves deep into the dirge, with the two-part, nearly half-hour, massively moody "Cave Of Hair", a detailed, obsessively repetitive soundscape of ominous chuggery, building from quietly brooding near ambient creepy-crawl to metallic majesty... Another awesome Overlord recording, in other words. And fyi, Lunar Jetman features Faust's Hans Joachim Irmler on keyboards, who has performed with PO previously, appearing on Live In Suomi - and who produced Circle's 2002 Klangbad release, Alotus. Not that PO nor Circle need Irmler to make 'em any krautrockier, they already had that covered!! But this IS plenty krautrocky. Double lp fancy limited (530 copies) vinyl for now via Aaron Turner's Sige imprint; cd version expected also from Ektro, someday soon we hope...

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It's "NWOFHM" in overdrive overload this week, with not one but two new albums from key exemplars of that Circle side project "scene" up there in Finland. The new vinyl-only offering from Steel Mammoth called Radiation Funeral, you'll find reviewed elsewhere this list, and then there's this, Out Of Darkness, the new cd from Pharaoh Overlord. With fists in the air (and tongues possibly not in cheek?) these two releases have really upped the ante regarding the METAL part of the NWOFHM equation. Quick recap for those out of the loop: Finnish space prog neo-Kraut band (and massive AQ faves) Circle like to dabble in the metal realms, on their own albums and also by means of various side projects, enough of which exist to populate a self-proclaimed, quasi-parodic New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal movement, NWOFHM for short. These bands usually use metal "signifiers" for their own twisted purposes, making music that's as much experimental and pop and prog as it is metal, but done up in leather and spikes basically for fun. Circle offshoot Pharaoh Overlord was originally more of a stoner rock take on Circle's motorik mesmerism, dark and psychedelic and heavy. But not "metal". Then they did the album entitled #4, which was NWOFHM almost to the point of being "actual" metal (though still totally repetitive and hypnotic a la Circle of course). But #4's follow up, their previous disc to this, Siluurikaudella, was, while we liked it quite a bit, a definite departure, more of a freakout/improv thing, definitely not remotely metal (or NWOFHM). So for anyone a bit confused by Siluurikaudella, you'll be happy to hear that Out Of Darkness returns PO to headbanging territory, and then some!! Definitely a metal album, and a rockin' one. Well, it starts off with a lovely acoustic guitar intro, "Eyes Of The Pharaoh", but starts rockin' about 43 seconds later, when the title track erupts, total classic metal riffage with Danzig meets Hetfield vocals courtesy of the singer from US stoner metal band Night Horse, who also appears on the disc's killer final track "I Am The Light". He's not the only guest, as Circle's big hero Bruce "Jesters Of Destiny" Duff and his bandmate Frank Meyer from LA sleaze rockers Angus Khan have cameos too, providing some guest vocals and lead guitar on a few of the cuts here as well. The nearly ten minute "Devastator" demonstrates that Pharaoh Overlord haven't abandoned the "Circular" style of minimalist repetition, that track devastates indeed with its seeming endlessness (which is awesome). Somewhat poppier is the next track, the chugging "Doomsday Mourning", that's got some psychedelic Uriah Heepishness to it, laden with synths, psych soloing, and dramatic vocals. And that's more the norm, this album being really pretty darn catchy throughout, Pharaoh Overlord mixing their '80s metal obsessions with some Teutonic '70s proginess, and whatthefuckever else they desire. Our heads aren't just banging, they're spinning. Turns out they weren't kidding with the song title "We Came To Rock"! Ok, it gets a bit goofy on the two Bruce Duff sung tracks (especially "No Speed Limit") but that's entertaining too, however for the most part this is a REAL metal / hard rock album, or at least sounds that way, being strange rather than silly when it's not full on metal. For fans of Circle, Queen, krautrock, Thor, La Otracina, Blue Oyster Cult, Accept, Judas Priest, Metallica, Steel Mammoth, Destruction, Anvil, Lucifer's Friend, White Boy And The Average Rat Band, uh, and everything else that's awesome. Oh, if this wasn't cool enough already, love the outer space neon lazer tiger cover artwork!!! Purrfect for the tight ripping soundz within. The cd booklet also contains an interesting quote from R. Buckminster Fuller. Didn't know he was a metalhead. FYI, there's another new PO album too, vinyl-only effort called Horn, that we're hoping to get soon too. Haven't heard it yet, don't know where it falls on the NWOFHM spectrum...

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Self described as 'industrial doom', the French outfit known as P.H.O.B.O.S. take the industrial pummel and clattery chaos of classic Godflesh, the serpentine song structures of Voivod and the grim grating brutality of the most bizarre black metal, and wind it all into a dense, hateful, slow motion black hole beast, plodding and pounding mercilessly, like some sort of unstoppable behemoth, crushing everything in its path, sucking life, spitting fire, spewing jagged shards of metallic blackness. The sound of a million monstrous jackboots, marching endlessly toward some unspeakably bleak final destination. The stretched out feedback soaked abstract doom of Khanate, given an industrial makeover, throbbing Teutonic rhythms, never even coming close to midtempo, instead pounding out impossibly slow rhythms, the whole thing wrapped in white hot sheets of feedback, and churning tarpit riffage, with the occasional melody tossed in, surviving only briefly, like a cow thrown into a river full of pirahnna, the whole thing exploding in a churning, bloody froth before settling back into the relentless machine like crush. And despite all that brutality, it's also amazingly hypnotic and listenable, with some of the beauty of the post-Godflesh outfit Jesu wethinks. Originally released on the Appease Me label, run by Phobos' French metal brethren Blut Aus Nord.

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When Brooklyn's White Hills was here last week (they played a rad instore, hope you made it), they brought us some copies of this new compilation on which they appear, alongside the likes of Mammatus, The Heads, Kawabata Makoto, Residual Echoes, Plastic Crimewave Sound, Fuzzhead, and a couple others (many of whom are depicted in the cover drawing montage, done by Plastic Crimewave, whose art you may know from his Galactic Zoo Dossier 'zine). Heavy duty, fuzzed out, psychedelic stoner rock nirvana here, folks! But it's NOT exactly a comp, actually. It's the follow-up to an out of print disc called Jamnation that we reviewed (thumbs up) a few years back. And that's the catch, kinda. Both Jamnation and now Phosphene River aren't just various artists collections, they're spoken word projects from the fevered mind of one Dan McGuire, who lays down his gritty beatnik poetry overtop the instrumental spacey effects laden bliss and/or throbbing distorted guitar riffage being pumped out by these bands. We've said it before, we'll say it again, we're not so big on the spoken word thing. You'll never catch us at a poetry slam. BUT, we gotta say, first off McGuire's rambling Lizard King orations, we can deal with, usually. His subject matter is surreal and sinister enough to somewhat make up for the sheer self parodic silliness of the whole spoken word thing. And, his words don't really get in the way of the music, which is really why we're listening. He slips right in there like he belongs, instead of being a total distraction. He's got a cool, gritty voice (we compared him to turned on, dropped out John Wayne / Henry Rollins hybrid before) and sorta sounds like the hardboiled detective doing the voiceover in some '50s noir movie, except with the drug fueled, fear & loathing laden, imagination of a Hunter S. Thompson. Even when he's getting Biblical, as he does on the PCS track "Are You A Dragon". His streams of consciousness can be sort of hypnotic - we'll admit to listening less to what he's saying and more to the heavy sound of the whole thing. And as we said when we reviewed Jamnation, McGuire has a knack for knowing when to back off and leave space for the music. He'll let a track play halfway through sometimes before opening his mouth - and the tracks he's selected for this disc are of course good 'uns, as you might have already guessed from the quality lineup who contributed. It's pretty well done for what it is! So, if you like stoner psych -and- spoken word, this is for you for sure. If just stoner psych, well we'd say that this comp is rad enough to withstand the inclusion of all that jawing. And think about it, McGuire's purple flow of deviant verbiage is really not that different from what these band's guitarists are doing with their axes, wailing away, off on their own freaky trips...

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We haven't heard from Canadian outfit Picastro in ages, in fact, we sort of assumed they might be no more. In past reviews we described their music as having a "somber heaviness" which makes them a pretty good match for doomgaze duo Nadja, and indeed the two groups team up for this lp collaboration, and from the sound of it, the A side seems to be more of a Picastro record, with Nadja guesting, and the B side a Nadja record with help from Picastro. But both sides are pretty great. Picastro's 'side' is a series of shorter tracks, a woozy sort of post rock, detuned twang, male and female vocals, plenty of weird distortion, there's a Tom Waits sort of junkyard vibe to a lot of the sounds here, which also reminds us of the late great Reeks And The Wrecks (whose lost first lp is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list). The sound shifts from creeping slowcore to a sort of jazzy drift, all shimmering strings and muted percussion, all wreathed in a folky ambience, the whole thing like some abstract dirgey drone folk slowcore, and the sort of thing that reminds us of Codeine and post Phleg Camp weirdo country combo the Reveries. The flipside is a single sidelong track, which should be the first hint that Nadja are in the driver's seat. The second would of course be the thick swirling buzz, rife with acoustic guitar (Picastro?), the sound muted and washed out, before blossoming into full on distorted shoegazey dirge, blown out, heavy and hazy, but still melodic and darkly pretty, the two groups a perfect match, conjuring up a sweet bit of dreamy sorta folky doom bliss! Includes a download coupon!

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Grind monsters Pig Destroyer offer up one of their rare, but always devastating DOOM efforts here. Rather than the usual horde of frenzied blasts, the brutality here comes in the form of just two long tracks, recorded back in 2006 and apparently saved for a rainy day. The title track is the real long one, over 19 minutes, and operates in a slo-mo realm of distortion-drone sculpting, punctuated by sudden explosive detonations. There's stretches of extended, Eyehategod-esque feedback, and some cryptic spoken samples in the mix as well. Some of it sounds liturgical, like a metal monk ceremony, almost blissful in spots. But very heavy indeed when all is said and done. Mass and volume is right! This is Pig Destroyer entering Boris and SUNNO))) territory. The other, shorter track, "Red Tar", is by far the more, uh, rockin' one, still slow and low but more about lurching riff-crush and nasty, phlegm-choked vokill gargle (and more peals of feedback and other sludgey moves from the Eyehategod and Graves At Sea playbooks, too). By the end, though, it takes on a surprisingly majestic, melodic character, almost uplifting despite all the bad attitude on display, finally fading away with a passage that's purely percussion, after a flourish of feedback. We kinda wish Pig Destroyer would dabble in this sort of slightly post-rockish doom metal more often, they're dang good at it!

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What might you expect from a band called Pig Heart Transplant? With a record called Hope You Enjoy Heaven? And song titles like "Prison / Fortress", "Crawling Through Hell", "Abject. Debased. Diseased" and "I Video Tape Your Diet"? What if the band featured members of Spazz, Silentist, Iron Lung, Despise You, Artimus Pyle, Gob, Brainoil and more? What if we told you they shared some splits with dirgedoomnoise duo Blue Sabbath Black Cheer? Yeah, you'd probably come up with something like THIS. A punishing slab of slow motion power violence, crushing downtuned guitars, pounding drums, harsh hellish vokills, everything dripping with filth and murk, total Man Is The Bastard worship for sure. Low end all over the place. Some tracks the guitars are burning hot, the production way in the red, others are super creeped out murkscapes of industrial pound and processed vox, while still others are sludge-doom trawls through all manner of crusty low slung dirgemetal, and a couple are long buzzing drones, with howled vocals over the top, sounding a bit like a low end deathmetal Whitehouse. Maybe our favorite track though, is "Feeding From Your Trough", reminding us a bit of Geronimo, a fucked up mechanical sprawl of pounding crunch and hissing static, dripping with distortion and noise, locked into a stumbling lurching rhythm, with some chunks of grinding heaviness that sound like they could blow out your speakers, slipping from clipped robotic trudge, to hateful blacknoise dirge and back again. Some seriously harrowing shit for sure. Which as you probably know by now, means WAY recommended. At least for those in the mood for some murky and menacing musical punishment.

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MPEG stream: Conquering The Flesh
MPEG stream: I Video Tape Your Diet

Latest chunk of blackened heaviness from aQ faves, Pig Heart Transplant, who we just discovered are now aQ neighbors! Not sure most folks would be all that thrilled to discover these guys were your new neighbors, not once they feasted their ears on this stuff. Downtuned pounding sludge, Godflesh style, or maybe Swans, metal laced with industrial pummel, massive grinding guitars, monstrous drumming, harsh vox that slip into deep bellowed croons, some sort of churning, chugging avant noise rock doom, like some impossible hybrid of Swans/Wolf Eyes/Godflesh/Eyehategod, or something. The track has a rad outro of abstract buzz, laced with strange bursts of metallic clatter, washed out and eerily hypnotic. PHT are up against Juhyo, who we've never heard before, but after hearing this are way into checking out more. A glitched out electronic buzz gives way to something much more haunting and droney, deep sonic swells beneath processed reverbed samples, the vibe super cinematic, the track drifts and drifts until it's swallowed up by a wall of SuUNNO)))-like thrum, pelted with streaks of sine wave high end, before melting down into a droney creepy sample heavy drift. So good. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Housed in super swank silk screened silver on black sleeves with similarly printed and #'d inserts.

There's lots of ways we find out about cool new bands. We finally listen to a promo that came in the mail, or a customer raves about them, or we read about 'em in a fanzine or on the internet, etc. etc. One of the best ways though, is to randomly see a band playing live that you've never heard of before, and be impressed. That's the deal with how we discovered local SF heavies Pigs. I (Allan) just moved into a new apartment here in the Mission, that's not too far from the Potrero del Sol skatepark. On one of the days I was moving stuff, I could hear live music coming from the direction of the park, where they do sometimes have outdoor shows. Sounded like yr basic punk rock, but then a band started playing that - as best I could tell from several blocks away - sounded much more metallic and interesting, with shredding guitar leads and chunky riffage and everything. And obviously very loud. So, needing a break from my moving tasks, I wandered over to the park posthaste to check out what was going on. When I got there, the band I'd heard was still playing, and they were GREAT. Super heavy, fairly hairy power trio (boy drummer, girl bassist, bearded dude guitarist / sometime vocalist) kicking out the jams big time, sorta like a scrappier, scuzzier Melvins, in their earliest, fastest, punkiest incarnation. Like, with some more Motorhead mixed in. I had a blast watching the rest of their set, totally into it, already wondering if they had any recordings I could get my hands on for Aquarius. Also wondering, just who the heck they were. Well both questions were soon answered when the drummer held up a garish purple, very DIY looking handscreened LP emblazoned with the name Pigs, saying they'd just put this record out. Better yet, moments later a friend of mine appeared, who it turned out was friends with band as well, and told me that he'd just been telling Pigs before they played that they should bring their album down to Aquarius. And so they did, a week or so later, not just the limited vinyl but also a cd version too. Just like their live set, the album is a blast (of distortion, among other things). Sometimes slow and sludgy, equally often full of frenzied jamming, Illuminati House Party is pure metal-punk underground awesome, with more than a few nods to classic rock catchiness. Pigs traffic in Black Sabbathy riffs (most definitely in "Lurch"), their songs furthermore having plenty of rollicking swing to 'em a la both Sabbath and Sleep. The guitarist constantly peels off tangly, widdly leads like they're coming back into style. All the tracks here (11 of 'em) rule, from the sick-o smartassery of "Hard Lovin' Van", a song with gnarly Ginnish licks and hoarse, strangled vox that could almost be an old Tad tune (some of the lyrics: "let's go the lake, and feed the ducks...get in the van, take the candy"), to the even more punk "Population Control", to the wasted doom of "Hessian's Revenge" and sheer shred of "Surf's Up". And then there's the epic instrumental 3-part rifftastic "Taser Trilogy" wherein Pigs show off their Champsy chops, not to mention stoner sense of humor (and not for the first time on this record). Yeah, great stuff! Is it possible to imagine an unholy hybrid of, um, Electric Wizard, Breadwinner, and, er, Pissed Jeans?? Pigs might be it. Soooo glad I was within earshot of the skatepark that day!

MPEG stream: Hard Lovin' Van
MPEG stream: Surf's Up
MPEG stream: Taser Trilogy I: V.V.E.T.C.

Doomheads rejoice (slowly and mournfully of course), because Rhode Island's most sluggish misery wizards have slithered forth once more from their crumbling Victorian mansion, suffocated and overgrown with ivy (we assume), to deliver their second crushing heap of cavernous ominous DOOM. Void Worship is an album full of oily gothic horror, adorned with creeping Vincent Price melodies that seem to creak like a haunted shadowy staircase. The songs crawl and lurch like a sick and dying leviathan - occasional lush guitar harmonies peaking through, providing momentary glimmers of sunlight, before being swallowed again by the looming grey stormclouds. The drums are a dreary inevitable plod that almost seem to slow down the more the songs progress, giving the sense that the music is buckling and collapsing under its own insurmountable weight. The vocals of The Wizard (yeah, that's his name) are dramatic and theatrical, looming like a silhouetted specter, bringing to mind some of doom metal's more expressive frontmen like Albert Witchfinder from Reverend Bizarre or Robert Lowe of Solitude Aeturnus. His voice is drenched in reverb and somewhat buried in the mix, sounding ghostly and distant yet also proud and direct, as if he were conjuring sad spirits with arcane regretful spells! The extended instrumental passages where his voice disappears entirely (four of the eight tracks on this record are entirely instrumental) only add to the fleeting mystery of his presence. There are some more uptempo moments, like the dusty graveyard boogie of "The Paladin", but for the most part this is an album of lamenting Lovecraftian bleakness in the tradition of early Warning or Pallbearer, the music moving carefully through the shadows like something from Nosferatu. Light those skull candles, draw those purple velvet curtains, and adorn yourself in your finest ceremonial robe - the time has come to give yourself over to the void!

MPEG stream: Master's Chamber
MPEG stream: The Paladin
MPEG stream: Void Worship

It's a lot easier to write about metal when there's a hook. In our case, it's often that a band is super fucked up, their sound demented and damaged, but we worry sometimes that our thirst for the weird and wacky, perhaps paints to simple a picture of what we dig. Especially when it comes to metal. Cuz as much as we love the strange stuff, we have an undying love for the classics. Like many folks our age, we were lucky enough to grow up in a golden age of metal, whether it was crazy eighties hair metal, classic Bay Area thrash, speed metal, death metal, even the first and second waves of black metal. Those are sounds and musics we will never grow tired of, and we're just as excited about bands of today who are mining those sounds, and offering up their own versions of the classics, as we are of the folks actively subverting and bastardizing those sounds. Which brings us to Rhode Island doom trio Pilgrim, who besides having some of THEE best metal names we've heard in ages (Krolg Splinterfist, Slayer of Man on drums, Count Elric the Soothsayer on bass, and of course The Wizard on guitars and vocals), sonically take their cues from the classics, Sabbath of course, Candlemass, St, Vitus, Cathedral, but also (slightly) more modern outfits like Electric Wizard and Sleep. And of course, judging by their handles, and the awesome fantasy album art, you can also probably guess what sort of lyrical focus these guys have, yup, swords and sorcery and dragons, and all that good stuff. So yeah, sonically, it's pretty much everything you're blackened doom-loving heart could want, massive downtuned riffs, slithery Sabbathy slo-mo grooves, pounding drums, the songs epic and majestic, rife with classic doom melodies, all minor key and mournful, and the vocals, a crooned, sort-of-Ozzy-ish heavy rock caterwaul, that suits the music perfectly, maybe not distinctive enough to push these guys to the next level, but the perfect voice for pure underground true doom. Melodic, a bit raspy, passionate, a little rough around the edges, but it suits the music, which again is some seriously awesome classic sounding doom, from the swaggery atmospheric opener, complete with cool almost chanted wordless vox, to the more spaced out tarpit creep of the title track, with a handful of the tracks offering up sonic surprises, like the furious almost stoner rock groove part way through "Quest", not to mention some killer leads, the downright poppiness of "Adventurer", or the super strange midsong breakdown on "Forsaken Man" which is all slow motion post rock meander beneath what appears to be some sort of black magic ritual. So yeah, this may not be fucked up or freaky, warped or weird, but not everything needs to be, what it IS, is heavy, and catchy, and doomy, and pretty goddamn great!

MPEG stream: Astaroth
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Got a violent piece of vinyl here for all you proto-metal freaks - a reissue of a killer slice of science-fictional heavy rock, this obscure UK outfit's only album, a private pressing from 1974. Both proto-metal and proto-punk we reckon, heavy stuff with lots of psychedelic Hawkwindiness to it, basically everything you could hope for from a record that has both "Astral Traveller" and "The Ripper" as track titles!! And it does rip, the storming opener "Assasin" sets the tone, with throbbing riffs, wailing maniacal vocals, and wild soloing, reminding us of the Pink Fairies in particular when the guitarist tears into some licks from the old Ventures surf rock classic "Walk Don't Run", though with their amphetamine energy they'd remind us of the Fairies anyway. They also achieve Wicked Lady levels of guitar freakout. And with the use of Moog, and the sci-fi aspects of songs like "Cyborg", they have something in common with Simply Saucer, as well. There's dramatic organ runs, and strident marching riffage, and some softer sounds too - at their mellowest, on tracks like "Bad Omen", they can be fairly melodic and Wishbone Ash-y. There's been a couple hard-to-find, long-gone compact disc reissues of this in the past (one on Little Wing Of Refugees, who changed the cover art and corrected the spelling of 'Assasin' to 'Assassin', and another on Killing Spell, who called it 'Cyborg Assassin', though that one also did include a few live practice space bonus tracks not found here). But this is the first time we've seen it reissued on vinyl, 180 grams to boot.

MPEG stream: Assasin
MPEG stream: Time Slips By
MPEG stream: Cyborg

Former Pentagram guitarist Victor Griffin is back, and he's 'born again' -- but he's still into the heavy stuff. The stoner rock/doom metal underground has been all a-buzz about Victor's new power trio Place of Skulls, and now Southern Lord has released Pentagram fans will find that Place of Skulls sounds rather more like The Obsessed or Spirit Caravan than Victor's old band, but of course if you like Pentagram, you're probably a fan of those bands too! Victor's vocals sound a bit like those of Wino, not as strong though, and the music is of course heavy, plodding and depressive-sounding (but with a positive, Christian message). Chicago's Trouble already established that Christian faith and doom metal can coexist (indeed, where would metal in general be without Christianity, whether bands are pro or con??) but Trouble had better songs. So, while Place of Skulls delivers some solid doom metal, we're not exactly blown away. Stoner/doom fans (esp. those really into Wino's bands) who aren't put off by the Christian aspect should check this out and decide for themselves. Furthering the parallel with Wino's bands, this includes an Animals cover ("Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", which for the record isn't as good as The Obsessed's version of "Inside Looking Out").

RealAudio clip: The Fall

The return of ex-Pentagram axemaster Victor Griffin's born again stoner doom outfit Place Of Skulls, and damn if this ain't the best one yet! In the past we've always been a little bit wishy washy about Place Of Skulls. Sure, they sounded great, whether Griffin handled the vocals himself, or even better when he handed the mic over to Wino (Obsessed, Saint Vitus, Spirit Caravan), but the songs just weren't that memorable. If we needed our Christian stoner doom fix, we could always turn to the almighty Trouble, but there was still something about Griffin and his band that kept us coming back, hoping that maybe suddenly, one day it would make sense and we'd be knocked out cold. Well, it never really happened. That is, until now. The sound is still perfect, if anything, fuzzier and more stone-y, heavy and super rocking, but the songs this time around are killer. The second track "Sense Of Divinity" might be one of the best stoner rock tracks ever. Sounding like some lost Acid Bath recording, dark and droning, a huge Trouble-some riff, with awesome psychedelic leads, and Griffin's voice, wow! We never would have guessed this was the same vocalist, a killer croon that sounds stronger than ever, still raspy and raw, but with way more emotion. There are plenty of slow songs too, all jangly strum and warm laid back groove, that sound quite a bit like Alice In Chains, which we don't mind one bit! In fact this whole record sounds like a gloriously perfect mash up of Trouble, Acid Bath and Alice In Chains, with some of the sludgier parts reminding us of other NOLA heavyweights like Down, Superjoint Ritual, Crowbar, etc. Fans of all things Pentagram, Wino, stoner rock, Sabbath worship, NOLA sludge-groove as well as all you Christian doomsters who have worn your Trouble records to bits should be all over this. Highly Recommended!

MPEG stream: Sense Of Divinity
MPEG stream: Darkest Hour

The much-loved Wino, grizzled underground doom-metal guitarist and vocalist extraordinare, who first gained fame with the legendary bands The Obsessed and Saint Vitus and more recently fronted the popular Spirit Caravan (R.I.P.), is back, riding high in the saddle again in not one but two new bands. OK, Place of Skulls isn't actually new (more on them in a sec) but The Hidden Hand is. Basically they're the continuation of Spirit Caravan by other means it seems. Wino recruited a new rhythm section -- one without overt substance abuse problems -- that really allows him to fire up his trademark heavy stoner rock into punkier, more aggro realms than before. They really kick ass with some complex instrumental stuff goin' on. Definitely further out on a limb musically than the Caravan. Lyrically, Wino indulges in a lot of ridiculous conspiracy-theory -- he's really gone off the deep end with post 9/11 paranoia. But his heart's in the right place, politically revolted with the Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft coup. It's redneck radical rock for X-files fans. Heavy riffs, heavy concepts, there's even a reading list. Meanwhile, Wino also joined up with Place of Skulls, the band of ex-Pentagram guitarist Victor Griffin (whoo-hoo! supergroup!). Their first album Nailed came out last year on Southern Lord and we gave it a bit of mixed review, criticizing the vocals particularily. But they had potential, and now with Wino in the band they're much much better. It's a funny thing, actually, 'cause they already sounded a lot like Spirit Caravan or The Obsessed, but I guess they needed the talents of the man himself to really shine. His vocals help a lot. Victor still sings, too, but he's somehow better now thanks to Wino's example I guess! Dunno if they're still a Christian band, I'm not sure how Jesus fits into Wino's conspiracy theories... but he's certainly a 'spiritual' dude, so it works. Anyway, both Place Of Skulls and The Hidden Hand worthy successors to Wino's previous projects, with Place Of Skulls more straight-up doom metal for doom heads and The Hidden Hand harking back in ways to The Obsessed's DC punk roots, Bad Brains jazz fusion lurking in the grooves, though neither band would exist if not for Black Sabbath of course. And the Place Of Skulls album cover wouldn't exist if it weren't for Steppenwolf's "7"...

MPEG stream: Long Lost Grave
MPEG stream: Dimensional Sojourn

Well, this is a bit of a weird one. Planet Aids is actually the side project of a band we've yet to review beacuse their records have been so difficult to get. But whatever, here's the story, there's a Belgian ultra doom band called Bunkur, whose records are supposedly on the way to us right now and should be reviewed on the next list. They are of the slow motion funereal doom variety, like Skepticism or Thergothon or Khanate. In fact they sound quite a bit like Khanate but with weirder dubbier rhythms. Well, in the process of trying to get Bunkur records for the store, Bunkur mainman Manuel suggested we check out his other band Planet Aids, who he said were way more fucked up and noisy, and damn if he wasn't right. The problematically monickered Planet Aids offer up one 30 minute track of sick glacial death doom, ultra de-tuned guitars, gargling hellish howls, and rumbling bowel churning bass. Sounds good huh? Well, it gets even better, as every once in a while, the crusty murk gets interrupted by bursts of bizarre industrial rhythms, that sound like a malfunctioning Godflesh. Weird as fuck but so so cool. On the same label that released the two equally amazing Urfaust records.

MPEG stream: Apokalyptik AIDS (excerpt)

Warning: Emotional devastation alert! Planning For Burial is a one man project from New Jersey whose been toiling tirelessly (and gloomily) for a good few years now, and although this is only his second proper full length, Thom Wasluck has at least 12 releases to his name and with this latest monolith of gorgeously devastating post rock finally seems primed to reach the wider audience he so rightfully deserves. Coming courtesy of the ever-reliable Flenser Records, a local label fast gaining a Profound Lore-like reputation for its meticulous selection of dark fringe music free of genre constraints, Desideratum is an enthralling and mesmerizing blend of post rock, doom, shoegaze and ambient. It's at times pummeling but also beautifully melodic, undeniably sad but also lush and warm - a warmth that's offset by clinical programmed drums, all regimented and martial - which lend a really cool contrast. Contemplative piano rises over the plod of monotonous percussion and the heartbreak static wash of layers upon layers of guitar. The dusty fading light of drifting cinematic synths melts into freeform vocalizing and woozy guitar picking. Sparse riffing builds and builds to the point of breathless exhaustion. Then that dirge of sludgy downpicked guitar emerges again, draped over distant mournful singing and minimal synthetic drums. It's that perfectly irresistible crossroad between abrasive noise and gut wrenching bittersweet melody. At times bringing to mind Jesu and at other times Soundtracks For The Blind-era Swans, or even our recently reviewed (and raved about) Nothing and Have A Nice Life records. For fans of those bands and anything heavy & heartstring tugging this is a total must have, and a no brainer for an Album Of The Year contender.

MPEG stream: Where You Rest Your Head At Night
MPEG stream: 29 August 2012
MPEG stream: Golden

KHANATE ALERT!! ULTRA LIMITED CD ALERT!! ARCHIVE RECORDS RELEASE ALERT!! THIS DISC IS ALREADY OUT OF PRINT SO THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE ALERT!! By now you should definitely know the drill. Archive records, who in the past have released the triple live Boris cd (now out of print), the live LSD-March (also out of print), the Khanate live cd (you guessed it, out of print), the live Growing cd (this too, out of print) and a live Earth double cd that ended up being so limited we never even got any, now offers up this newest ultra limited gem. As far as we know, by the time you read this review, this disc too will be out of print and we'll have the last 40 or 50, so, needless to say, ACT FAST! But why should you care? Well, howabout the fact that everything Archive releases is beautifully packaged, this release being no exception? Or howabout the fact that if you don't get this from us now, it's off to eBay with you! OK, the main reason to pick this up is it's 50 percent of mighty doom sludge behemoth Khanate. Guitarist James Plotkin (who you also might remember from such past glories as OLD and Phantomsmasher / Atomsmasher) and his rhythmic partner in Khanate, drummer Tim Wyskida. But, don't expect any downtuned slow motion doom and gloom here. There are some sludgy moments, even one track that sounds like a single guitar track plucked from a Khanate song, but for the most part it's a lot more abstract, with Plotkin coaxing all sorts of sounds out of his guitar, from scaping angular riffing, to scarbbly percussive skitter to shrieking high end skree, to warm muted warble, and even one track of delicate moody drift. Wyskida is right there along side him, offering up subtle little shuffles, simple plodding thuds or wild octopoidal squalls, depending on the mood and what best will balance Plotkin's guitar action. Cool stuff whether you're into Khanaate or not. Packaged as gorgeously as always, a three panel fold out, adorned with simple text and abstract blurry shark photos, the cd affixed to a small plastic nipple on one of the panels. Comes in red and blue, the color you get will be totally random. And we hate to belabor the point, but this is VERY LIMITED and almost for sure already out of print!

MPEG stream: One
MPEG stream: Two
MPEG stream: Four

Ok, here's this list's special treat for all you proto-metal fans: a reissue of obscure, early '70s UK hard rockers Pluto! This digipack reissue isn't new, it came out a few years back but we missed it at the time - and in fact, as far as we know it's out of print (the whole Breathless label being now defunct), but we found a handful of these at one of our suppliers and grabbed 'em all. So, they won't be here for long, act fast if you want one. Pluto's sole album was originally released in 1971 (yes, once again, 1971 completely blows our minds, good grief!) on Pye's progressive, "underground" Dawn label. But the type of progressive rock Pluto plays isn't, y'know, like Yes or Genesis, or Comus for that matter (whose First Utterance was also a '71 Dawn release). No flutes or tricky time signatures. They just play poppy, heavy rock and aren't afraid to boogie. This digipack reissue contains 13 tracks in all, 3 of 'em non-album bonus cuts from singles. Bonus single track "I Really Want It" is possibly the star of the show, it's been comped several times, on Dawn anthologies and so forth, and for good reason, with suggestive lyrics that are well matched by the song's slow, stomping groove. But there's LOTS of good songs here, from cowbell knockin' fuzz rockers to some more melodic, ballady, even Beatlesy ones. Recommended for folks into the likes of early Wishbone Ash, Orang-utan, Leaf Hound, Human Beast, Power Of Zeus, Three Man Army, Luv Machine, Bubble Puppy, and other vintage, semi-heavy obscurities.

MPEG stream: I Really Want It
MPEG stream: Crossfire
MPEG stream: She's Innocent

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. Australian band that combine Sabbathy doom metal riffs and death metal vocals, a bit like Cathedral. Distributed in the US by Andee's label tUMULt, and we're the first store to have it.

Heavy psych and metal freaks, perhaps you remember we reviewed a reissue of this power trio Poobah's 1979 album Steamroller a while back? While '79 was a late date for "proto-metal", that's definitely what this Youngstown Ohio outfit sounded like, heavy duty acid rock n' roll action with plenty of psychedelically shredding guitar work. Well, now you can check out where they wuz comin' from, 'cause this "Special Collector's Edition" of their 1972 independently released debut has just been "re-unleashed". Just peep the vintage b&w photos of the band, all long hair, beards, head bands. Total hippies! HEAVY hippies. Hard as nails. But definitely hippies (like the fabulous furry freak bro looking dude depicted in the crude cover cartoon, spitting up into a toilet - or is it the other way around?). So, yeah, Poobah is "proto-metal" fersure on this one, right from the get-go with the aptly titled "Mr. Destroyer", which despite the peace-loving message of the lyrics seems to demonstrate that violence for violence's sake can work, in rock anyway! And aside from one (quite nice) laidback number, "Enjoy What You Have", the six tracks that make up the original release of Let Me In are all similarly raw rifftastic freakrock heaviness, very underground, their unhinged high wattage psychedelia almost kinda punk, a la the UK's Crushed Butler, Detroit's Death, or Australia's Coloured Balls. BAD ASS in other words. Heck the ominous creepy-crawl of "Bowleen" is practically doom metal, though Poobah do have their lighter side, with a penchant for funny voices and trippy rhythmic passages, hippy potsmoking stuff y'know... The bonus tracks (there's 10 on the gatefold double vinyl version and 12 on the compact disc) are all also quite worthy, recorded circa '72-'73, mostly more high energy ass-kickery in the vein of the album tracks, with a few weird noisy studio experiments thrown in for good measure... or maybe not "studio" exactly as most of the bonus cuts were recorded live to 2-track in the guitarist or bassist's living room. It all sounds great though, from the surprise vocal harmonies in the midst of "Make A Man Out Of You" to the Ted Nugent style gonzo goings on of "Going To Rock City"... Quite a treat, now we're waiting on a proper reissue of Poobah's second album, US Music, from '76, that's gotta happen someday too...

MPEG stream: Mr. Destroyer
MPEG stream: Bowleen
MPEG stream: Make A Man Out Of You

Woah. Somebody somewhere just had a fantasy come true, and it's got nothing to do with the bondage photos that often adorn Merbow releases. It's Japanese noise master Masami "Merzbow" Akita jamming with American stoner rock outfit Porn, who feature none other than the mighty Dale Crover of the Melvins on drums. Also Tim Moss on guitar, and heaviness engineering guru Billy Anderson on bass! Add in the Seldon Hunt art/design and this promises to be quite heavy, or noisy, or both. Definitely both, though it sounds much more like a Merzbow record than anything else. Shrieking electronic skree all over the place, with some plodding boombastic drums and heavy guitar riffs struggling through the dense muzzzzzz. Kinda what you might expect! There are a dozen Roman numeral numbered tracks, each one individualized with Merzbow's noise dynamically varied and vibrating, from crinkum-crankum glitch to high pitched whine to howling, whooshing zapping. Porn's contributions (occasionally) add more structure and momentum. Distorted (natch) vocals surface at one point, the drumming speeds up.... or at other times, despite Porn's presence, the Merzbovian brutal harsh noise simply takes over entirely. There's certainly precedent for Merbow to mix it up with "rock" music. His Hard Lovin' Man album some years back featured samples of Deep Purple, ferinstance - and of course let's not forget about his couple collaborations with Boris!! Maybe, like those, Porn + Merzbow will be a "gateway drug" for some stoner/doom fans to get into the total noise thing (note however that Merzbow here is far more extreme than his relatively subtle performance on Rock Dream with Boris). Also, as (in principle) Merzbow fans, but ones often overwhelmed by his prolific output, we're quite partial to his collaborative efforts, giving high marks to recent discs he did with Keiji Haino and Richard Pinhas, juxtapositions like this one which somehow enhance the effect of Merbow's noise aesthetic.

MPEG stream: II
MPEG stream: VI

Orilla Oscura is the latest solo record from Jon Porras, former aQ-er, and one half of dronedoom duo Barn Owl. It's Porras' second release this year (along with Black Mesa), but this one takes Porras's signature sound, all smoldering twang flecked drift, and haunting droned out mesmer, and applies it to something much more high concept, and the results are pretty fantastic. Using old tapes as the basis of Orilla Obscura, Porras slowed down and manipulated the source tapes, adding effects and various textures, and then approached the compositions as if the guitar was a tool with which to explore these ghostly sounds, the haunting mysteries revealed by these old tapes, do in fact make the perfect background for Porras' haunting sonic ruminations, so much so that in many places it's difficult to tell what's guitar and what's tape, the various sounds bleeding into one another, long passages of somnambulant drift, give way to some soaring, almost shredding (at least the barn Owl / Porras version of shredding) distorted guitar blissout, lush distorted layers of guitar aimed heavenward, quickly drifting back to earth and settling into another sprawl of slo-mo soft psych drift. The tapes seem to provide texture as much as anything, adding plenty of hiss and hum, giving the sound a rough around the edges feel, and a mysterious warmth. Divine and dreamy, and beautifully ghostly. To be fair, the sounds here are not hugely removed from Porras' other solo work, or as Elm, or even his work with Barn Owl, but it is a stunningly subtle progression, as he continues to push the boundaries of his own explorative guitar ambience, continuing to delve deeper into the dark and dusty corners of abstract psychedelia, and with each record further refining the sonic essence of shadow and light, rendered here in lush, sweeping epics of spectral guitardrone and heaving swells of warm chordal shimmer. So nice. Housed in a super heavy full color gatefold jacket. Includes a download coupon as well!

MPEG stream: Light Of Dawn
MPEG stream: Your Sleeping Ghost
MPEG stream: Light Of Dusk

Hell yeah, '70s proto-metal from Detroit (and not only that, released on a Motown subsidiary)! These dudes have appeared on some cool comps of heavy psych obscurities we've listed (Up All Night, White Lace & Strange) but this is the first time we've seen a legit reissue of their only album, from 1970, entitled The Gospel According To Zeus. This digipacked reish is from the master tapes. The album starts off with stone classic "It Couldn't Be Me", a track that hiphop headz might recognize as having been sampled on an Obie Trice record a few years back. What we also now realize, is that recent AQ fave band Malachai (the sampledelic UK duo on Domino) essentially sounds, at their best, a whole heck of a lot like that one song by Power Of Zeus - it's as if Malachai based their entire sound on the big beat fuzz pop hard rock of "It Couldn't Be Me"! So that's pretty cool. But Power Of Zeus have a bunch more bellbottomed acid rock goodness to offer here... ten tracks total ranging from upbeat garagey psych nuggets like "In The Night" and "I Lost My Love", to the mellower, harpsichord-laced "Green Grass & Clover" and the epic, aptly titled doomic dirge "The Death Trip", eventually culminating in the freaked out finale of prog opus "The Sorcerer Of Isis (Ritual Of The Mole)", another track that's been sampled by hiphop producers. Along the way, lotsa bangin' fuzz riffs, wailing organ, lofty vocals, and cowbell knockin' grooviness, real good stuff for all you proto-metal (and popsike!) fans into the likes of Sir Lord Baltimore, Granicus, Atomic Rooster, Dust, Frijid Pink, Bubble Puppy, and last list's proto-metal selections by Bang and Elonkorjuu. Way cool. If Power Of Zeus played shows with Funkadelic back in the day, we wouldn't be at all surprised...

MPEG stream: It Couldn't Be Me
MPEG stream: In The Night
MPEG stream: No Time
MPEG stream: Realization

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY.

For the longest time, when people into heavy music asked us who the best band in SF was, we would generally say Burmese (of course), maybe Slough Feg, sometimes the Fucking Champs, if they said EVER, then it would be Weakling hands down (or, well, we could argue for hours). But over the last few years, more and more amazing heavy bands have been giving those other bands a run for best-heavy-band-in-the-city money, none moreso than boy-girl-boy doom-crush psych-sludge trio Prizehog, who over the course of the last couple years have become the sort of band that should be HUGE. Every Melvins Nerd and Harvey Milk obsessive out there, should WORSHIP these guys (and gal). It's definitely only a matter of time, their records kill, but live they DESTROY, their set at our South By Southwest showcase was a stunner, and they sort of stole the show, and it's not hard to see why, especially here, on Prizehog record number two (number three if you count their long out of print debut cd-r), which finds the band further honing their sound, still present are of course massive skull caving drum pound, churning downtuned guitar chug, percolating sci-fi synths, the Melvins / Harvey Milk still huge, but Prizehog seem to want to be both a psychedelic space sludge band, and some sort of sludge pop band, and it's that split personality, that makes this shit rule, every song a push and pull between all out freakout, and hook heavy crunch, and somehow, instead of opting for one or the other, they simply figure out a way to do both at once, weaving impossibly catchy melodies, hooks galore into blackened doom sludge dirges, and then stretching that shit out into droned out psychedelic heaviness. The vocals a deep dramatic croon, the keyboard unleashing all manner of textures and psychedelic sounds, everything tangled up with the group's progged out downtuned crush. All three songs here are great, but the 11 minute closer might be THEE jam here, a brooding slow build, all super textured and psychedelic, with some haunting harmony vocals, and twisted FX over a churning chug, and some doomic pound, the group allowing for lots of space, letting notes ring out, and gradually decay before the next hit, stretching it way out, before exploding into some serious mathed out noise rock pummel, only to then blossom into some weirdly progged out epic majestic bombast, before devolving into a closing coda of dirgey drum creep and blown out guitar moan, before a final blast of mathy crunch. Released on the legendary Gravity Records label, which makes Prizehog labelmates with groups like Mohinder, Heroin, Clikatat Ikatowi, Angel Hair, The Locust, Man Is The Bastard, Universal Order Of Armageddon, Unwound and more! Fuck Yeah!

MPEG stream: Luck, The Bailing Haymaker
MPEG stream: Mountaintop Removal

We were heartbroken when our pals, the local weirdo boy-girl-boy doom crush psych sludge trio Prizehog, decided to leave San Francisco, but we understood - hell, SF is a harsh place to live these days if you're not rich, and ultimately, we weren't surprised to see Prizehog settling in Portland, a city arguably much more hospitable to struggling musicians and artists, but listening to the sonic results of this move, you'd think they were transported to some alien planet, transmitting this new record via some sort of futuristic technology. Cuz holy fuck, if this band was one of our favorites already, they somehow still managed to up the musical ante, taking everything we loved about them before, and making it, well, more. More heavy, more noisy, more psychedelic, more warped, more twisted, more confusional, more proggy, more what-the-fuck, and really just more ridiculously, mindblowingly next level doom-sludge genius. We may be prone to hyperbole, but it still feels like we might be understating just how goddamn good Re-Unvent The Whool really is. Imagine a warped doom-prog, like some alternate universe metal Magma, processed vocodered vox, tangled up in churning spaced out riffage, underpinned by droning rumbles, and laced with twisted fragmented melodies, launching occasionally into full on sludge-pop creep, like some killer Torche jam spinning in slow motion, a gloriously glacial single digit rpm onslaught, that definitely makes the usual the Harvey Milk comparisons still pretty apt, but imagine HM if they were somehow slower, druggier, proggier and more totally and confusionally WTF. Songs explode some furious grinding metal, squalls of chugging riffage, barraged by machine gun drumming, all wrapped around the bellowed alien vox. But this is doom or sludge, or some twisted avant version, so songs inevitably slow down to a tarpit crawl, swirls of sparkling sci-fi FX surround the proceedings like glittery clouds of malevolent sonic fairy dust. And that's just one song in! And it only gets more gloriously fucked up and next level from there. It's hard to describe what's even going on, cuz some of the music here is literally so unlike anything else out there. These hairy weirdos are channeling some twisted alternate universe sonic garble, and transmuting it into fucking blown out, twisted genius ultra doom, noise pop, prog-sludge nirvana. The record seems to blackly blossom in stop motion, flitting from near stasis, to frenzied crush and back again, tribal drumming avalanches over thick, coruscating chords, synths spitting out symphonies of klaxons and alarms, the backdrop for the unfurling of an impossibly downtuned, droned out slab of multiple o'd doooooooooom dreaminess, that manages the impossible feat of being crushingly, punishingly heavy, but also, kinda pretty too. Some seriously lovely 'oooooohs' will surface in the midst of a wild chaotic squall of churning blacktar throb, or a cascade of harmonics will rain down like shooting stars over a field of grinding, corrosive crunch, it's goddamn musical alchemy, the sort of musical magic almost no bands are capable of. And then out of fucking nowhere, Prizehog will get all twangy, offering up some sort of country doom, that sounds like it should be ridiculous, and it sort of is, but it's also just about the goddamn greatest thing you'll ever hear, like Earth, Barn Owl, Morricone, Scenic, all melted down, and spit out as a creepy massively metallic Wall Of Voodoo sort of campfire crush, sounds bizarre, and it totally is, but it's a bizarre brilliance that once again, should convince pretty much any doom lover with a penchant for sonic weirdness, that these three are the sludge saviors we've been waiting for, written about in some forbidden text, a fragment from the lost metallic scriptures, and Re-Unvent The Whool, their second coming, signalling some musical rapture, where we're all engulfed in fields of musical flames, but fuck, if this is what the end sounds like, and we can only hope it is, then we say bring it on, and what a way to go. It's hard to know what else to say, other than repeat what we've always said, Prizehog should be adored, they should be worshipped the way Harvey Milk and Boris and the Melvins are, cuz maybe at one point, Prizehog were simply kids aping their heroes, aspiring to the sludge-y genius and twisted outsider metal of those other groups, but as hard as it may be for some folks to believe, Prizehog, might have outheavied, and outweirded, and outgeniused those masters, and become masters themselves, masters of fucking alien prog-doom, long haired, psych sludge, dirge-drone, damaged art pop. Fuck yeah. Super striking, full color, eye popping, Wildildlife-worthy cover art, swank spot varnish printed jackets, and includes a download too...

MPEG stream: Parradiggum
MPEG stream: Whoady
MPEG stream: Shed
MPEG stream: Gnumskull, The Ruler

After a tiny handful of way too limited cd-r releases, and an endless series of devastating live aktions (including a show stealing opening slot at our 2009 South By Southwest showcase), comes the long awaited full length from this SF boy-girl-boy doom-crush psych-sludge power trio, a sprawling five, track, 40 minute epic, that will definitely hit the spot for all of you hard and heavies that like it slow and low, and dig the likes of the Melvins, Harvey Milk, Boris and other slo-mo dirge merchants. But Prizehog infuse their low end assault with all manner of druggy psychedelia, warped doom pop and blurred blissed out slow-core, conjuring up a sound that pounds and pummels, drift and shimmers, grinds and churns, slipping effortlessly from bombastic Melvinsy howl and chug, to a super hooky heaviness, that reminds us of the warped Buttholes beholden noisepop of Prizehog pals Wildildlife, from a sort of bluesy, blissed out tarpit ZZ Top swing and swagger, to a dark and dolorous black hole heavy slowcore a la Codeine or True Widow, often all wound up into a single song. Thought Nest begins with "Swayback", opening with a little bit of harmonica flecked blues fakeout, that quickly transforms into some seriously downtuned heavy doompsychblues churn, lurching and mathy and metallic, but laced with some subtle groove, the vocals a sort of worldless croon, the song pounding away before slipping into a woozy, washed ouy lysergic haze, a blurred starfield of chiming guitars and whirling layered melodies, before returning to a more swaggery, slithery lumbering crunch, only to finally blossom into a skull caving, knuckle dragging bit of slo-mo dirgery, all bellowed howls and keening high end tones, wrapped around a pummeling, drum heavy dirge-metal doom-pop workout, grinding its way through clouds of tripped out FX, and finishing off like it began with a bit of harmonica-y blissed out blues, before one final blast of churn and chug. "Dunner" is up next, unfurling a stretch of tripped out shimmer, draped over garbled soft focus white noise, all hovering beneath clouds of cymbal sizzle, spidery guitar melodies, a druggy bit of drift, before a flurry of monstrous drumming drags with it a glorious psychedelic metallic cacophony, wild squalls of tangled guitars over intense double kick drumming, only to slip right back into something way more abstract, moody and murky, a sort of blackened slo-mo ballad, some simmering slowcore shimmer, bleary and blurred, almost like a more metallic, more drugged out True Widow, the sound dense, and layered, alternatingly smeared and shimmery, soaring and pop flecked, crusty and crunchy... The oddly titled "Aykranoid" explodes with a chugging almost Eighties style metal riffing wrapped around some pounding black hole drum pummel, wild swooping and swirling effects, and some seriously twisted vox, the aforementioned vocal bellow, but here even MORE bellowy, drenched in effects and way up in the mix, spitting out mush mouthed stream of consciousness vokills, that add a weird psychedelic avant pop vibe to the otherwise more metallic backdrop, before again shifting into a slow slithery crawl, the sound epic and majestic, but still muddy and murky, warped and woozy. "1865" is a bit more introspective, a slowly materializing smoldering bit of chordal guitardrone buzz, spread out into a gauzy hypnotic hypno-dirge, the beats spread way out, each chord allowed to ring out, and fade into something softer and more shadowy and nebulous, a contorted bit of dark dirge droniness, the sound shifting from crash and crunch, to muted thrum, all very trancelike and ritualistic, especially when the ghostly washed out vocals drift in, the sound transforming into a sort of crumbling, super distorted dream pop, again sounding more like a bastardized True Widow or Codeine, although here the sound grows ever more caustic and corrosive, but never without losing that moody pop vibe, just getting louder, and more dense, eventually locking into a more metallic bit of contorted churn, only to bliss out a bit, before a final stretch of lurching, pounding pop flecked pummel. Finally, the record finishes off with "Ramsong", which begins in a cloud of grinding guitar noise, and swirls of chaotic buzz, a wild bit of droned out static psych, out of which emerges yet another gorgeous bit of low slung slowcore shimmer, dreamy and druggy and drifty, before exploding in a blast of seriously cruching metallic riffery, the drums a wild octopoidal pound, the vocals that weird Tom Waits / Buzz Osborne bellow, the sound nearly schizophrenic, flitting from pretty drift, to damaged dirge, rife with cool little gnarled guitar licks, streaks of feedback, layers of buried melody, a stuttering sprawl of strangely melodic heaviness, an expansive epic chugscape, that seems to grow more poppy as the song unwinds, and weirdly enough getting darker and more dense, while simultaneously seeming to space out, drifting into something more psychedelic abstract. The song finally begins to dissipate, the various elements loosed from structured song and allowed to float weightless, a darkly delirious night sky of loosely tangled melodies, of overlapping spectral voices, of washed out guitar buzz and deep low end rumbles, soft focus effects and dreamy druggy blissed out ambience. Fucking SO RULING, gorgeous stuff for sure, crushing, hypnotic, heavy and heady, poppy and spacey, the sort of thing that should appeal to folks who dig the dooooom, or the druggy psychedelia, or the dirgey slowcore, or the warped pop, or the sludgey metal, and just might be your favorite new record if you dig ALL of those. Which we absolutely DO!! Pressed on 180 gram vinyl and LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: Swayback
MPEG stream: Dunner
MPEG stream: Aykranoid

Folks outside of San Francisco are probably unaware of the bitchin' underground rock scene going on here, and we're not talking about the experimental / drone / cd-r scene, that scene is happening too but those folks get way more press. We're talking about the bands, the rock bands, that play basements, play at Thrillhouse Records, a killer performance space / shop in the Mission, who release cd-r's too, but whose sound is more metal and sludge and rock than drone and drift and shimmer. Wildildlife when they were here were part of that scene. So are Ovens, THE best pop band in the city (with a record coming out on tUMULt any day now), then there's Robocop III, who we've yet to hear, but like based entirely on their name. And then there's Prizehog, who have probably played with all those bands, but whose sound is all their own. Their cd-r is 5 long songs, each one a slow building, brooding chunk of slow motion heaviness. It's metallic, but not really metal, heavy and sludgey and dark, but with weird bits of epicness and majesty mixed in. There's definitely a Harvey Milk thing going on, and we'd be WAY surprised if fans of that band didn't dig these guys as well. Not so say they're aping HM, more like they're sort of orbiting the same sonic black hole. Plus Prizehog have a lot more spaciness going on, lots of swirl and shimmer, long drawn out stretches of dark drift, rumbling low end and ominous dronescapes, often sprawling into moody abstract slowcore drifts, peppered with synths, skeletal rhythms and blooping bleeping effects, that slowcore sometimes sounding almost like a blackened doom metal, before returning to their glacial downtuned pound, impossibly slow crawls through near static metal riffage, and squalls of drum splatter, and a howled guttural voice that sounds like it's gargling glass and spitting blood, the whole band a lumbering beast, lurching from chord to chord, note to note, occasionally pausing to rest beneath the glimmering starlight, before rising again to continue on its path of utter destruction. Heavy, fucked up, freaked out, distorted and brutal, space-y and sometimes sorta pretty, bet these guys destroy live, but for now this chunk of filthy heaviness and sludgey crush will do just fine.

MPEG stream: Ramsong
MPEG stream: Sleuth

At last, the long-anticipated release of Probot -- Dave Grohl's teenage metalhead fanboy wet dream come true. Yep, before Grohl was famous as a Foo Fighter and former member of Nirvana, he was kid fully into hardcore and metal. So now he's gone and done something that just not enough rich and famous people seem to do -- he wrote a bunch of metal songs and then sent 'em to a dozen of his favorite metal vocalists for them to sing over! (Maybe he got the idea from the Iommi album he himself guested on a while back.) As a result, you could look at this as more of a compilation/tribute than an album by a band called Probot. So, gimme the AQ-review on this you ask? Well, in short, it's definitely a cool concept, not necessarily a great album, but one that fans will definitely dig! We're talking fans of Mr. Grohl and/or the roster of singers: Cronos (Venom), Max Cavalera (Sepultura, now Soulfly), Lemmy (Motorhead), Mike Dean (Corrosion of Conformity), Kurt Bretcht (DRI), Lee Dorian (Cathedral and old Napalm Death), Wino (The Obsessed, etc.), Tom G. Warrior (Celtic Frost), Snake (Voivod), Eric Wagner (Trouble), and King Diamond (Mercyful Fate/his own self). Not a bad line-up, eh? Each track sounds like a mixture of the Foo Fighters and a pastische of whatever band the singer was from. Among the best are the Lee Dorian doom epic "Ice Cold Man" and the one with Eric Wagner, "My Tortured Soul". That one might be the best on here 'cause although all the vocalists are cool, Wagner is one of the few who both has a rad voice and is also actually a REALLY GOOD singer and so is capable of adding his own vocal melody line and making the piece just that much more of a song. Almost everyone else is stuck singing along with the basic riff or rhythm, which Grohl kept fairly simple on account of how the singer was going to have to sing it sight unseen (and also because he's saving his songwriting oomph for the next Foo Fighters opus?). Making this even more drool-worthy for true metal freaks, Away of Voivod did the cover art, and the packaging overall is top-notch, with photos of the singers (the one of Lee Dorian, looking all of 16 years old, is the cutest!), and the nice touch of little graphic symbols representing each singer's original band. Oh and one more thing: there's an unlisted bonus track featuring famous metal voice Jack Black of Tenacious D!! It's one of the best cuts too. ...Ok, since you asked, herewith follows the list of singers whom Andee and Allan would select for Probot vol. 2 (or for similar projects of their own when they get rich and famous): Scott Reagers (St. Vitus), Abbath (Immortal), Paul Di'Anno (Iron Maiden), Gerrit Mutz (Sacred Steel), Dax Riggs (Acid Bath, etc.), Bobby Liebling (Pentagram), Eric Adams (Manowar), Jeff Walker (Carcass), Danie Powers (Powers Court), Joey Belladona (Anthrax), John Bush (Armored Saint/Anthrax), George Criston (Kick Axe), Paul Shortino (Rough Cutt), Claude (Smack, if he was still alive, of course), Mike Monroe (Hanoi Rocks) Ronnie James Dio (Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio), Phil Mogg (UFO), Steve Grimmett (Grim Reaper) and I imagine we could go on and on. Maybe ours will have to be a triple cd, or quadruple cd or....

MPEG stream: Dictatosaurus (w/ Snake)
MPEG stream: My Tortured Soul (w/ Eric Wagner)

Eagerly awaited, at last it's now here, the new import disc from South American doom overlords Procession - and we say overlords without a doubt, even thought his is just the second cd from this crushing Chilean underground act, and in fact can be considered their debut album - since the one we highlighted previously, The Cult Of Disease, was technically an ep, with bonus tracks from an earlier demo. One of those demo tracks, to these ears already a doom classic, "The Road To The Gravegarden", reappears here, redone (with special guest guitar leads/harmonies courtesy of Peter Vicar, ex-Reverend Bizarre). The five new tracks are equally awesome, Procession trudging forth resolutely into eternal darkness, bearing aloft their hymns of glorious despair. What we said before about Procession certainly applies to this album as well. It's magnificently heavy, the majestic, morose vocals and fuzz laden guitar work are world class (both provided by the same talented gentleman, obviously a doomed soul). Destroyers Of The Faith is possessed of such a serious, sorrowful, doom feel. All the songs except the intro are long (and slow!), but never dull, being both moody and moving. Procession may just be today's truest torchbearers of utter, epic doom, certainly they're way up there with The Wounded Kings, Lord Vicar, Black Oath, Griftegard, and fellow Chileans Condenados, among newer bands well versed in the old ways, carrying on the tradition of Candlemass (who are still at it as well), taking things to an emotionally effecting extreme... defending the (doom) faith, really, not destroying it. And incorporating some interesting, darkly psychedelic textures too, so that this might be the "epic doom metal" band fans of sludgier/artier fare like Cough and Orthodox could really get into as well. Join the procession, and doom on!

MPEG stream: Destroyers Of The Faith
MPEG stream: Chants Of The Nameless
MPEG stream: Tomb Of Doom

Are you feeling doomed? Play some Procession and you will! And you'll dig the doomed feeling too, if you're like us. Hailing from South America, Chile to be precise, this obscure trio dish out the ever-lovin' doom metal on this their debut full-length (technically, they call it an ep, 'cause three of its six songs are taken from an earlier demo tape, but it's 48 minutes long and works as one coherent album). The band's logo and the cover art may make this look like a black metal release, and IS quite dark and serious and Satanic, but it's definitely slo-mo true doom in the old school vein of Reverend Bizarre and The Gates Of Slumber and of course Saint Vitus and Black Sabbath, with lyrics about such abysmal subjects as plagues, gravegardens, and dying ancient empires. The inevitability of disease, death and decay, and loss of faith, are what Procession acknowledge and embrace. They do so sincerely, with much grace and majesty - and sheer heaviness, the guitars dragging you down with their lugubrious riffs and insalubrious tones. There's weird atmospheres, occasional uptempo surges, and no lack of morose melody. Freakin' EPIC. The band's guitarist/vocalist Felipe Plaza Kutzbach sings with all the grandiose power of classic Candlemass, but in a lower register, and with more of a rough, anguished edge. He's definitely Procession's biggest draw, both his vocals and guitar playing - not just churning riffage, there's also some really interestingly effected leads heard here, strangely psychedelic and melancholically beautiful, and his doomy talents are ably supported by the solid bass and drums. Procession (great name, by the way, we imagine doomed souls marching into the underworld, or cloaked monks in some ceremonial, uh, procession) prove themselves a force to be reckoned with. We've listed some excellent doom debuts lately, Garden Of Worm, Crowned In Earth, Griftegard, but THIS one is possibly the best. Certainly the troo doom minded here have been listening to this A LOT. And considering how much cool new music (doom and otherwise) we are inundated with here every week at AQ, that's saying something. Can't wait for the new one we hear is in the works...

MPEG stream: The Funeral Of An Age
MPEG stream: Down The River Of Corpses
MPEG stream: The Road To The Gravegarden

Doomheads! Hungary's Psychedelic Fanzine is probably the best, most consistent 'zine publication devoted to the doom metal underground worldwide, covering the whole spectrum from doom-death-grind to psychedelic space rock to stoner/desert bands to cultish '80 trad heavy metal. It's a good place to delve into doom history while also finding out about new stuff (Andee

The demise of legendary doomlords Reverend Bizarre had two strange but positive after effects, first, there seemed to be a flood of posthumous RB releases, more we think than when they were actually a band, a from-beyond-the-grave release schedule to rival Biggie or Tupac, as is further demonstrated by yet another new Reverend Bizarre release reviewed elsewhere on this week's list! The second outcome was the more inevitable one, a whole slew of new projects from RB mainman S.A.Hynninen (aka Albert Witchfinder), whose voracious need to rock would obviously need a new outlet, and thus we have The Puritan and Opium Warlords. Both born of Hynninen's newfound obsession with ultra doom, with sludge, especially of the Japanese variety, Boris, Corrupted, Solar Anus, Hynninen set forth on a mission to create some serious Japanese style ultra doom sludge. We'll have the Opium Warlords disc for next list, but for now, we shall celebrate The Puritan, and Lithium Gates, which compiles two previously released, now out of print vinyl lps, one of which we never had, the other which we had in extremely limited numbers. We've become convinced, that Hynninen must be somehow related to Circle's Jussi Lehtisalo. They're both Finnish, they both front or fronted kick ass heavy rock bands, and both have totally twisted senses of humor, which finds its way, however subtly (or not) into their music. So while the Puritan was originally inspired by Japanese doom and sludge, by the time it worked its way through Hynninen's cracked Finnish filter, it had been transformed into something else entirely. Something heavy and brutal, but warped and far out and brilliant. This is no ordinary doom. And is far removed from the doom of Reverend Bizarre. Although on first listen, maybe not so far removed after all, beginning with the first Puritan lp, The Untitled, the sound is ultra heavy, downtuned, spaced out, melodic, with a distinctly classic strain of classic doom running through it, the opening intro could indeed be the opening salvo from some doom classic, and the follow up too does not sound that far our, awesomely epic and troo vocals over a lumbering slow motion dirge, but then the record shifts gears, and "The Sulphur - Coloured Clouds Are Hurrying Through the Lithium Gates" explodes like some nineties noise rock juggernaut, loping bass, crumbling guitars, jagged riffing, only to gradually slow to a nearly complete halt, before slipping back into slow motion ultra doom dirgery. "The Sepulchral God Holding a Speech for the Moribund" sounds almost like some extra heavy slowcore, with some dramatically crooned Slough Feg like vox, before a strangely haunting outro, with clean guitars, whirling ambience, mysterious sampled voices, including a classic Charles Manson rant, all hovering beneath thick washed out guitars and lilting sweetly sorrowful melodies. Then it begins to get even weirder. The second half of Lithium Gates contains the entirety of The Black Law, the second Puritan lp, which begins with some old timey organ, wheezy and lo-fi, some lost in time parlor music, lilting and melancholy, until everything is flattened by a massive wall of downtuned guitars, exploding into a plodding doomic dirge, which is not really funereal, or even all that slow, a plodding lurching doom that reminds us of Midwestern pigfuckers Killdozer more than anything, which as far as we're concerned is good news for sure. The chuggy midtempo crunch pounds and churns while the vocals howl and bellow, there's a distinctly AmRep / Touch And Go vibe to the doom on display, the main riff locked into a loop that seems to go on and on and on, giving the proceedings a sort of Gore vibe as well. The riff eventually gives up the ghost leaving a tranquil, almost ambient fade out, all soft streaks of feedback, delicate melodies, distant slabs of slow moving sludge, all smeared into a weirdly dreamy drift. From there on out, the record continues to devolve gloriously with some bizarre gnarled super distorted guitar weirdness, completely panned so it careens from speaker to speaker, ear to ear, until the riff finally kicks in, a big ol' filthy doomy dirgey riff, the drums and guitar locked tight, while in the background, the WHOLE time, the moans and groans of a lady seemingly in the throes of violent passion(!), the whole track endlessly looped and cyclical, the only variation being the woman's voice, here the Gore vibe is undeniable, a killer riff, just pounding away, over and over, very hypnotic and strangely minimal, but that's only the first track. The second revolves around a muted chug, spread out over a layer of seemingly constant buzz, with more deep crooned dramatic vocals, the production reverby and very new wave sounding, a little like Joy Division or the Cure but way heavier and dripping with doooooom, the wind-down at the end laced with bursts of super epic and melodic drama, turning the outro into some sort of doomic Godspeed. Needless to say, fucking awesome! And essential listening for any one into sounds slow and low, doomy and heavy, fucked up and far out.

MPEG stream: Opposite the Fireplace - The Wall of Shotguns
MPEG stream: The Stars Above Us Are all Evil
MPEG stream: The Sulphur - Coloured Clouds Are Hurrying Through the Lithium Gates
MPEG stream: The Blue and Purple Lesson in Love

The Reverend Bizarre may be dead. But The Puritan lives on in his place. The Puritan being the new group founded and fronted by RB's S.A.Hynninen (aka Albert Witchfinder), this being their second missive, the first, another quite limited 12", that managed to go out of print before we could nab any. For part two though, we did manage to grab a bunch, but be warned, it too is crazy limited and there's a good chance these will be the only copies we can get. So doom obsessives, dig in... But, this is no ordinary doom. And it's quite far removed from the doom of Reverend Bizarre as well. The record begins with some old timey organ, wheezy and lo-fi, some lost in time parlour music, lilting and melancholy, until everything is flattened by a massive wall of downtuned guitars, exploding into a plodding doomic dirge, which is not really funereal, or even all that slow, a plodding lurching doom that reminds us more of Midwestern thud rockers Killdozer more than anything, which as far as we're concerned is good news for sure. The chuggy midtempo crunch pounds and churns while the vocals howl and bellow, there's a distinctly Amrep / Touch And Go vibe to the doom on display, the main riff locked into a loop that seems to go on and on and on, giving the proceedings a sort of Gore vibe as well. The riff eventually gives up the ghost leaving a tranquil, almost ambient fade out, all soft streaks of feedback, delicate melodies, distant slabs of slow moving sludge, all smeared into a weirdly dreamy drift. The B side begins with some bizarre gnarled super distorted guitar weirdness, completely panned so it careens from speaker to speaker, ear to ear, until the riff finally kicks in, a big ol' filthy doomy dirgey riff, the drums and guitar locked tight, while in the background, the WHOLE time, the moans and groans of a lady seemingly in the throes of violent passion(!), the whole track endlessly looped and cyclical, the only variation being the woman's voice, here the Gore vibe is undeniable, a killer riff, just pounding away, over and over, very hypnotic and strangely minimal, but that's only the first track. The second revolves around a muted chug, spread out over a layer of seemingly constant buzz, with deep crooned dramatic vocals, the production reverby and very new wave sounding, a little like Joy Division or the Cure but way heavier and dripping with doooooom, the wind-down at the end laced with bursts of super epic and melodic drama, turning the outro into some sort of doomic Godspeed. Needless to say, fucking awesome! (btw, those new to The Puritan, or doom in general, might want to pick up the last Reverend Bizarre double cd too while you're at it, So Long Suckers, that band's mighty doom swansong). We're kicking ourselves for missing the first 12", as this, our first experience in the strange doomy world of The Puritan most definitely has us wanting more...

From the same label that gave us records from Alkerdeel, Aidan Baker, Bongripper, Expo 70, Caina, Gorgontongue and Persistence In Mourning, comes this, the debut ep from UK sludgelords Pus, whose sound is a lurching, lumbering downtuned heaviness, that owes as much to Electric Wizard as it does Moss. The guitars are thick and oozy and blackened, downtuned and tarpit groovy, the drums simple and solid, the vocals a reverb drenched bellow that sounds a bit like Mike Williams from Eyehategod crossed with Justin Broadrick circa the good ol' Godflesh days, each song mostly a single riff, pounded at relentlessly, laced with occasional gouts of wah drenched psychedelic leads, the songs once in a while oozing into something more blackened and dirgey, or something more propulsive and downright rocking, but for the most part, it's a relentlessly tranced out black dirge, doomy and psychedelic, mesmerizing and hypnotic, culminating in the extra noisy title track, which substitutes the bellowing vox for a weird droned out monk like chant, the guitars a big muddier and murkier, the result something weirdly dreamy and trippy. Definitely recommended for fans of all things slow and low, doomy and sludgey. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: The Black Swordsman
MPEG stream: Pus