We never really thought about Indiana as a hotbed for blackened doom-ed sludge, but all it takes really is one band to change that, and by the sounds of When All Became None, that band just might be Coffinworm, whose sound is equal parts Unearthly Trance and Eyehategod with a healthy dose of black metal mixed in. Crusty, filthy, raw, punk as fuck, but WAY metal, super dynamic and melodic, there's really not much to like here.
The first song alone, lays it all out for you, after a super aggro, stop/start intro, the band lurch into some seriously detuned doom, laced with howled vox, woozy spidery guitar melodies, and downtuned chug, before transforming into some midtempo melodic post metal, occasionally interrupted by blown out blackened blasts and stumbling doomic breakdowns. The vocals are incredible, a sort of crusty punk black metal hybrid, the guitars are thick and dense, the riffs epic and heavy, with plenty of groove, every song a swirling psychedelic cloud of sonic bong smoke, an ever shifting hybrid of doom metal, crust punk, sludge - but also a weirdly keen melodic side, that the band seems to try to be keeping in check, but it still seeps into all their songs, which is not at all a bad thing, but shit this fucked up and fierce, shouldn't be catchy to boot.
How about the warped lurching, melting guitar crawl of "Start Saving For Your Funeral", or the churning Cavity-like chug of "Strip Nude For Your Killer", or the almost stoner rock sounding crust of "Spitting In Infinity's Asshole", with its almost Electric Wizard sounding intro?
Fuck it, these guys rule. That's all you need to know. If the words crust, doom, sludge, black, psych, grind, churn, druggy, crushing, pummel don't already have you frothing at the mouth, then wethinks you just might be in the wrong review...
The Buried By Time And Dust label, as their name implies, specialize (mainly) in digging up dusty old treasures from the vaults... of DOOOOM! In the past, they've brought us vinyl reissues by such doom metal legends as Witchfinder General, Pagan Altar, and Solstice.
This latest release digs even deeper into the underground. Cold Mourning were (are?) a bona fide cult doom metal band, from the '90s, based in the "misty and miserable" locale of Monterey, California. They released one full-length cd back in the day, Lower Than Low on Game Two Records, and also did a lot of splits, with the likes of While Heaven Wept, Officium Triste, and Twisted Tower Dire.
If you haven't heard of Cold Mourning before, you might still be familiar with their guitarist Angelo Tringali 'cause he's member of AQ faves Slough Feg (he replaced Hammers Of Misfortune's John Cobbett on second lead guitar some years back). While Slough Feg have their occasionally doomy moments, Cold Mourning are a much sludgier proposition, inspired especially by Saint Vitus, but more grim and freezing.
Their songs from the abovementioned splits are all found here, along with demos, previously unreleased rehearsal recordings, and more, circa 1995-'98, including their track "Boggy Creek" from the Miskatonic Records cd comp At The Mountains Of Madness.
True doom fiends will definitely want to get their doom on with Colder Than Thou. 'Tis for fans of Vitus as well as The Gates Of Slumber, for instance.
Deluxe gatefold double vinyl, packaged with an eight page booklet full of b&w live photos, demo tape covers, lyrics, etc. Suitably thick and heavy, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
Indeed. The self-proclaimed California underground doom metal kings Cold Mourning present their first full-length cd release. Simple, slow, crushing stuff, almost more punk than metal (they even do a Discharge cover). Definitely one for Saint Vitus fans, although the vocals are a bit...rough. So if you're a stickler for good vocals, take a pass. But if sub-Sabbath heaviness is more your priority, go ahead and check 'em out.
Another entry in the ever expanding field of sound making we've dubbed doomdronedirge, from a group called Colossloth. It's a sound we've come to love, we just can't get enough of that creepy downtuned crawl, that sprawling rumbling ambience, it's doomy, but not metal, heavy, but not riffy, it's more like dronemusic infused with a degree of menace, an ominous blackness, think Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Wicked King Wicker, R.Y.N., Amort, Haptic, Grief No Absolution, and yeah even SUNNO))) to a certain degree.
Colossloth add their own twist to the proceedings, injecting their sound with a hit of industrial ambience, and some haunting piano, the result is entrancing, totally bleak and beautiful, a single epic doomscape, split into two side long drifts, all simple looped pounding rhythms and layered feedback, laced with muted bits of crunch and whir, rumble and creak, while throughout, a piano plays out a mournful melody, strings are plucked, melodies surface and unfurl before slipping back into the miasma, a mysterious minor key sonic dirge, some sort of funereal martial industrial doom drone trudge, mesmerizing and cinematic, this would be the perfect soundtrack for some Italian horror film, with the main character, in some sort of fugue state, hallucinating, wandering through an old empty house and out into the black forest...
Gorgeous and creepy and intense, but also weirdly pretty, the hushed melodic creep constantly battling with the crunch and hiss of the gloomy industrial drift, woven into a perfectly ominous dirgedronedoomdreamscape. AWESOME.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!!
Customers have been bugging us for a while now to track down some music from German psychedelic stoner rock outfit, and boy are we glad we did. Huge Hendrixian guitars, sun baked and lysergic, like someone snuck into Kyuss's old practice space and swiped THAT guitar tone, but then somehow managed to make it even MORE druggy and fuzzy. Furious blown out space rock jams, that are HUGE and THICK with snarling psychedelic guitars and pounding drums. But Color Haze balance these drug fueled freakouts with long stretches of jazzy shuffle, shimmering cymbals, muted riffing, simple throbbing bass, but it only sets you up to have you head caved in when the hammer falls. And fall it does, hard and heavy and so gloriously downtuned and freaked out.
And the Hendrix thing is actually not all that far off, we might mention Santana too. Color Haze are a weird mash up of epic heart-of-the-sun space rock a la Monster Magnet and Hawkwind, super overblown acid fried stoner rock a la Kyuss, but with plenty of that classic Hendrix guitar fuzz, and dreamily psychedelic Santanian stretched out jams.
Not sure exactly what it is about these guys, but when they lock into a jam, we get totally lost, completely carried away, and when the track finally winds down, we sort of shake out head, all bleary eyed, and try to remember where the hell we are and how we got there. Which probably tells you all you need to know about the potency of these super stoned, drug drenched, space rock freakouts for sure.
A couple years back, we raved about a disc called The Dematerialized Passenger, the first album from this unique band (or perhaps we should say project), remember? In case you don't, here's the deal: Combat Astronomy are a USA/UK collaboration, creating a crushing industrial/jazz/prog hybrid. Imagine Godflesh with a free improv horn section, saxophones squealing amidst the metallic riffage. Or Scorn taking a skronked-out stab at chamber music. Like their earlier release, this new Combat Astronomy opus is again laced with punishing, rigid drummachine beats, along with heavy, uber-low-end fretless bass shaking each song with doomic distortion. Which establishes an absurdly heavy context for sax, clarinet, flute and bassoon to freak out organically, like wild weeds creeping through cracks in giant slabs of concrete, on the floor of an abandoned factory somewhere.
But unlike their all-instrumental debut, this time Combat Astronomy have recruited a female vocalist, Elaine di Falco, who also plays some piano, to add yet another unusual dimension to their mashup of extremes, now reminding us slightly of James Plotkin's now forgotten post-Old project Flux. (Hmm, maybe Kayo Dot and later Ulver could be other comparisons now too.) If the addition of her vocals makes this a bit more overtly melodic, it's still no less extreme overall. And certainly just as intricate, her delicate vocal arrangements in themselves quite complex, multi-tracked, as on the urban R&B influenced (???? no, we're crazy) "Touch The Moon" and the album's whispery coda, "Ordinary Miracles". And the focus of CA is still on the ominous grooves, ambient electronics, and battling horn bleats... tracks like "Alive Inside Eternity" and "Sentinel" are lengthy epics (12:36 and 16:49, respectively) of serious beats and blats and skree, in the challenging, compelling, militant manner to which actually only Combat Astronomy can truly lay claim. The vocals, when present, then take it into another, equally unlikely, atmospheric realm of twisted prog-pop. Pretty darn cool!
You don't really hear much about Combat Astronomy, except from us at Aquarius Records (do you?). Which is weird, 'cause this band should be a lot better known than they are, among fans of heavy and/or freaky music, considering they're already on their third (and a half, counting a split) cd release, one that has been long awaited, for a certain subset of AQ-customers in the know. For those not in the know, we'll say that basically CA sound like a Justin Broadrick or Kevin Martin industrial metal act (Godflesh or God, something along those lines) mixed up with freeform improv horn-skree, for results both brutal and beautiful. This band, or we should say this collaborative trans-Atlantic project, to be precise, is the unholy spawn of American sub-bass sludge technician Jamie Huggett and British improv reedsman Martin Archer (and friends). Thus they don't play live that often, which might have something to do with their low profile. They're self-described as an "intense hypnagogic industrial/jazz/prog/doommetal hybrid", and we can't think of any other outfit that better fits that mouthful. As we now know to expect, CA's new disc dishes out uber heavy doomic annihilation, bludgeoning with squelching bass and machine-like beats, the entire thing in fact percussive in its distorted rhythmic impact, amidst ominous organ and rising electronic drone. Yet CA also has a prog/classical side, thanks to Archer's woodwinds and also some female vocals, first introduced to this previously all instrumental act on their 2nd album Dreams No Longer Hesitate, returning here only wordessly, to eerie, avant garde effect. With that in mind, and all the heavy bass, Magma fans might find this to be their extreme sludge combo of choice. We'd also of course recommend Combat Astronomy to those who appreciate the likes of Painkiller, 16-17, Scorn, and even UFOmammut...
And Earth Divided By Zero might just be their best disc yet, keeping the expanded palette of sounds found on their last outing, but leaving aside that disc's occasional surprise explorations of vocal (prog) pop song-ishness, instead forging a more organic synthesis of what we REALLY dig about this unit, the grinding low end and squealing sax skronk, the heavy rhythms and atmospheric, ambient-ish interludes. Not that it's without melodic surprises, like how track two tries to lull us with a placid piano intro, shades of Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore... but soon enough the bass and distortion attack is back in force. Punishing, but such sweet punishment.
A fine follow-up to 2011's Flak Planet, here's another hectic, headspinning batch of blat, bash, and blast from this unusual unit, avant-industrial-prog-jazz-doom titans Combat Astronomy, the collaborative project of American James Huggett (fretless 5-string bass, guitar programming, production, etc.) and the UK's Martin Archer (horns, organ, electronics). Archer also brings in the Juxtavoices choir for the disc's 13+ minute finale "Cave War", Juxtavoices being the vocal ensemble we last heard on the recent Record Of The Week outing by Archer's incredible Orchestra Of The Upper Atmosphere.
As any Combat Astronomy aficionado expects, 'tis total, tumbling heavy jazz-grind, the burble of Archer's clarinet or saxophones surfacing amidst the thick low-end rumble of Huggett's bass and jackbooted machine rhythms. Where else are you gonna get this fix? You'd have to go back to John Zorn's Painkiller or England's mighty God back in the '90s to hear something like this. Keeping it interesting, the iron fist of Combat Astronomy slips on the velvet glove, sometimes, with occasional snatches of sinister but blissful ambient drone or third-stream jazz or buried melody battling the propulsive chaotic crush of the riff/rhythm onslaught. The pounding power, freakout energy, and sometimes ceremonial-sounding beauty of these ten tracks have us fully entranced. Seeing 'em live (do they ever even play live??) would be amazing.
Never thought about this before, but we hope that the name Combat Astronomy doesn't mean that they're opposed to the science of astronomy, as in "fight against astronomy". Combat astrology, ok, but astronomy? Or maybe, it's a type of astronomy, the kind used in combat, like if you're a starfighter pilot or something. Anyway, not important, nevermind. What is important is that this band shouldn't be as under-the-radar as they are, 'cause they're pretty incredible.
On this, the 6th album from this unique transcontinental sludge/jazz/prog/improv unit, Combat Astronomy seriously bring the noise by providing not one but two whole discs of their extreme sonics, their most ambitious onslaught yet - part John Zorn style skronk, part industrial beatdown, part ambient dronology, part Magmoid symphonics, always reminding us of a certain strain of artists in the early '90s like 16-17, Painkiller, and God, all longtime faves of ours, as Combat Astronomy are now, too!
Disc one takes advantage of the potential to sprawl out in epic fashion that a double disc set affords, offering four pieces, all of 'em long ones, starting with the 17 minute "Tenser Quadrant", that opens with a stuttering, satisfyingly-distorted bass solo, soon joined by martial drumming, horns, and keyboard pulsations. It's a good intro to Combat Astronomy's incredible sound if you haven't heard 'em before: a powerful concoction of super thick heavy bass tones, rubbery rhythms, and suspenseful coloration from the horn section. By 'horn section' we mean Sheffield, UK's Martin Archer (known also to aQ customers also for his Orchestra Of The Upper Atmosphere project), who plays all the trumpets, saxophones, and clarinets on here, along with organ, electric piano, mellotron, glockenspiel, tuning forks, "snorks" (?), and more... Also on board, of course, is the other half of the usual Combat Astronomy collaboration, Minnesota-based James Huggett (5 string fretless and fretted basses, guitar, drum programming). Additionally for this release, drummer Peter Fairclough is employed as well, along with vocalists Julie Archer and Kelli Denoyer on selected tracks - but note, they are credited not with vocals but with 'voices', suggesting a more experimental, textural, abstract role.
Ok, back to our report on the first disc: Track two, "Unity Weapon", is even longer at over 21 minutes, and sounds like a BIG ensemble in full flight, a bunch of mekanik kommandos marching into an orchestral fray, lots going on, getting mesmeric in its repetition and layering, and then entering into a dense, atmospheric dream-space once a little past the half-way mark. The many moods of Combat Astronomy!
The intense skronk, distortion, and staggered rhythms then come roaring back on the nine minute title track, while disc closer "Hypnogeous" is a 14 minute descent into dark ambient drone, haunting and heavy, winding up in more-or-less power electronics territory.
If disc one wasn't devastating enough, there's another eight tracks in store on disc two. The second track, "SuperFestival", might be the most 'pop' thing we've ever heard from CA, while a lot of the others on this disc could vie for the most intense and speed-driven. Many moods, again. But in interest of not making the review quite as epic as the album, we'll skip the detailed rundown on all of 'em and let you investigate for yourself - which we recommend you do!!
Someone at aQ commented recently, when they discovered there was a stoner doom / sludge outfit called Conan, that it was just too easy, too obvious. But we're not sure they realized this horde of UK stoner sludgelords play "caveman battle doom", and thus, what else could you call your, band really? Especially when it sounds exactly like what Conan evokes. Shirtless warriors, painted up for battle, marching in formations to destroy and decimate, personally, we add a sort of futuristic twist, so they're actually cyborg warriors, trudging across the scorched surfaces of alien planets, onward into battle, but onward very very very very slowly.
The sound of these battles, or at least the music these cyborg warriors march into battle to, is all downtuned riffery, knuckle dragging caveman drum plod, churning tarpit death march creep, lumbering, stumbling heaviness, slow and low that is most definitely the tempo, tranced out and droney, psychedelic for sure, like an even more zoned out Electric Wizard, the vocals though are a bit surprising, not metallic shrieking, or cookie monster gurgles, instead it's bellowed and a little operatic, a sort of epic croon, that reminds us a lot of Harvey Milk, and gives Conan a whole different vibe than their doom/sludge brethren, more musical in a way, but also just more strange, and strangely more epic. Some of the tracks crank up the tempo a bit, others get sort of mathy and noisy, some get sort of Sabbathy, adding a bit of stonery swing, and still others get super psychedelic, adding swirls of FX, but ultimately, and inevitably, the sound always settles back into a gloriously head nodding, gut churning, rib cage rattling, riffy plod. The song titles ("Gravity Chasm", "Altar Of Grief", "Horns For Teeth", "Crown Of Talons", "Foehammer", "Total Conquest") and the smoke shrouded demon warrior cover art just seals the deal.
Obviously, if you're gonna call your band Conan, your sound had better be pretty darn burly! And barbaric. Well, this UK doom outfit is definitely worthy of the name. Their music is not by, nor for, wimps. Slow, low, and loud = HEAVY. Even Arnold might have had trouble bench pressing these riffs! The plodding, shuddering distortion on display here is kinda like ultradoom in the vein of Moss or Bunkur, but not quite so slow, speeding up as necessary when the crushing riffs are really ready to go in for the kill. The production is amazing, as are the downtuned sounds these dudes get out of their guitars and amps, sooooooo bludgeoningly blown out. Conan's a guitar/bass/drums trio but sounds more like bass/bass/bass/bass/bass/bass/bass... oh yeah and drums which hold up their end of the heaviness equation just fine. Meanwhile, the vocals, when there are any, are a distant bellow, a high wailing, soaring over and staying out of the way of the massively occupied bass frequencies. They make us think of Yob for sure, but quite not so Geddy Lee, a bit more shout-y, so Harvey Milk would be another good comparison. For a lot of this, actually, not just the vocals. And the Melvins too, say one of their epic sludgeathons like "Charmicarmicat" or "Night Goat". And as long as we're namechecking other bands, how 'bout godheadSilo? Corrupted? Early Sleep (circa Volume One)? Yeah Conan is worthy of being cited amongst such legends. Again, they'd better be, with a name like Conan.
Originally released on limited vinyl last year by Throne over in Spain, sadly, we didn't get any of those. But now thanks to Aurora Borealis, we have it on compact disc, in a nice silver and black digipack. 4 songs, 33 minutes, infinite heaviness.
Kick ass doom / sludge split from these two UK outfits, and in the spirit of the split, we figured we oughta do a split review as well, so Allan will tackle Conan's half, and Andee's got the Slomatics half. Allan's up first...
I just know Andee's gonna write, like, a novel about Slomatics, and to do the mighty Conan justice, I should give them an equally lengthy writeup too. Or, on the other hand, maybe I should just keep my bit short. After all, there's really not much more to say about the barbaric doom-drone metal that Conan offers up here, than we already said in our review of their 2010 cd on Aurora Borealis, Horseback Battle Hammer. To wit, "Their music is not by, nor for, wimps. Slow, low, and loud = HEAVY. Even Arnold might have had trouble bench pressing these riffs! The plodding, shuddering distortion on display here is kinda like ultradoom in the vein of Moss or Bunkur, but not quite so slow, speeding up as necessary when the crushing riffs are really ready to go in for the kill." We went on to compare 'em to Yob, the Melvins, and Corrupted, among others, as well. These 3 new tracks are in the same vein what we'd heard before from Conan, meaning bass-heavy blown-out bludgeon, though there's a subtlety here we should note as well. Their first cut, "Older Than Earth", is a six+ minute miasmic trudge. That's followed by the brief, unexpected electronic interlude of "Obsidian Sword", and then the epic "Retaliator" rounds out Conan's contribution to this disc, being an eleven and a half minute creepy-crawl that melds Conan's brawniest rumble and howl with more atmospheric synth-sizzle, kinda reminding us of Thrones. Very cool.
Now for the Slomatics half, take it away Andee...
It's been two years since we last heard from UK slo-mo heavies Slomatics, who we discovered initially via an impending split with late great prog-sludge combo Like A Kind Of Matador (whose great full length on tUMULt is still available btw), and whose full length debut was a huge hit with the doomlords (and ladies) around these parts, their sound a heaving, churning morass of murky tarpit sludge, heavily beholden to Harvey Milk, Eyehategod, Bongzilla, the Melvins of course, even Electric Wizard, thick crumblingly distorted riffage, massive tectonic drum pound, laced with little bits of melody, short stretches of mellow drift, but for the most part all about the pound and pummel. We got another taste of the Slomatics' heaviosity on a split with Seelah, their sound slightly more rocking, and a wee bit poppier, but ultimately more of the glorious dirgey same. Which brings us to this brand new split, with another band of heavy aQ faves, Conan, and while much of that Slomatics sound is intact, something has definitely changed. There's definitely a slight pop edge, which did seem to be present on past outings, but here is much more openly on display, especially on the first track "Lose The Five", which peppers the thick Sabbathy riffage, with cool harmonized melodies, and buried hooks, with the song dangerously close to sludge-pop territory at times, definitely like a murkier, less poppier Torche (which weirdly is how we described one of the tracks on the Seelah split). There's also some seriously majestic Harvey Milk like moments too, that sort of creep anthemic epicness. "Black Blizzard" find the group ditching all of the above poppiness, for some pure grimey, filthy dirgery, reverbed vocals over death march downtuned trudge, but wait, strap those headphones on, and you'll hear all manner of melody buried in the murk and the mire, not to mention some super cool dynamic stop/starts, and a crazily blown out production that gives the sound a trippy washed out vibe. Finally, Slomatics finish off the split with "Mont Ventoux", which begins all abstract and psychedelic, cards-in-spokes skitter, over off-in-the-distance drumming, then some howled reverbed vox give way to another stretch of doomic churn, this time sounding weirdly dubbed out and a little bit industrial, a bit of a Godflesh vibe all tangled up with the bands more gnarled and grinding chug. So ruling! Still hard to fathom why these guys aren't in everyone's doom/sludge pantheon...
This split sure makes sense, these two bands belong together, and well deserve the super bad ass sci-fi, mysterious warrior, snail steed, dual mooned, skull mountain cover art!
Shadow Kingdom sure has become one of those labels, that whatever they put out, whether it be some rare '80s metal reissue by a band we've never heard of, or an equally unknown release by a brand new band, we know want to hear it, 'cause the label is definitely focused on the sort of obscure cult metal we love, usually doomy, often epic, quite classic and sometimes a bit eccentric. From lost NWOBHM treats like Wolfbane and Deep Switch to modern day doom like Garden Of Worm and Crowned In Earth, they've been bringing it.
So, listen up, here's another good one from 'em. A Painful Journey Into Nihil is the debut full-length from Chilean doomsters Condenados (which means "Doomed" in Spanish, we're not surprised to learn). Of course, we immediately thought of Procession, another doom trio from Chile that we happen to love (and who have a new album out we hope to be getting soon!), and that's not far off the mark. Both bands traffic in trudge, extruding glacially epic dark doom that sounds a bit like Swedish gods Candlemass, but even more bummed out and despairing, maybe 'cause Candlemass was actually a pretty successful band, while these guys are struggling away in the depths of South America...
The six sluggish songs on here, the first two sung in Spanish, the others in English, are straight up serious quality old school doom all right, heavily weighted with lumbering, fuzzed out riffs in ye olde Sabbathy style, but even sadder and slower, their grinding graced with deep, somber vocals (rising to a higher pitch at some choice moments), and some nicely gnarly guitar solos amidst the melody. And we're pleased to report that Condenados has thrown a little flute in here too, just to make the album even better (and proggier). Keyboards and samples are also used to atmospheric effect. But none of that wimps this out, at all, it's HEAVY, regally so. A track like "Centuries Of Darkness" sounds like a classic that true doom devotees should have already been (slowly) banging heads to for, well, centuries.
Highly recommended to fans of the likes of Candlemass, Warning, Reverend Bizarre, The Wizar'd, Procession... and something about "Welcome To My Grave" reminds us a bit of The Obsessed.
"A fucked up mix of Trouble and Watchtower" is how Arch Enemy/Spiritual Beggars guitarist Michael Amott characterizes North Carolina's Confessor, who were Earache labelmates with Amott back in his days in Carcass in the early '90s. That is indeed a very accurate and -- if you know who Trouble and Watchtower both are -- useful description of cult metal act Confessor's sound. Definitely one of the more idiosyncratic pioneers of absurdly technical metal. Not death, not doom, not grind, not thrash... but all of the above, somehow. Confessor's main ingredients are uber-insane drumming (Stephen Shelton is a god), complex song structures being navigated by two guitars and bass, and high-pitched love 'em or hate 'em vocals that seem to follow their own wailing logic, as if the singer isn't even listening to the same music as the rest of the band. Yet it works. Though perhaps not to everyone's taste. Well, after making one amazing album, 1991's Condemned, and an ep that included a Trouble cover, Confessor disappeared into even deeper obscurity, seemingly gone but not forgotten by hardcore fans of tech-metal madness (I recall our pal Josh Smith, formerly of The Fucking Champs, telling me that the Champs used to have a rule of ONLY listening to Confessor when on their way to play a show). Recently, Shelton re-surfaced in the band Loincloth, but even cooler than that, now Confessor themselves are back! Yes! This ep, with two new 2004-recorded songs (definitely in their old style of proggy doom mastery, with the vocals now somewhat deeper and grungier), is but a teaser for their upcoming comeback full-length entitled Unravelled due in September! This limited-edition ep itself we'd pretty much have to recommend to pre-existing Confessor fans of the dedicated variety since aside from the two new songs ("Sour Times" and, fittingly, "Hibernation") it includes a 1990 demo version of the title track to Condemned, a radio edit of "Sour Times" (why?) and such for-fans-only "enhanced cd" extras as a screen saver and archive of band photos. However, if you're a fan on the fence about spending $13 for basically two songs, be aware that this also includes five minutes or so of Quicktime video footage of them live 1996, which proves that the singer can hit those high notes even as he's jumping around on stage. Wicked!
So, if you're a fan of this cult metal band (most of whom could be also described as rabid), then the news that a cd has been released containing rare early demo versions of the songs from Confessor's 1991 Earache debut Condemned, demo tracks that actually sound heavier than the recordings that ended up on the album, and is accompanied by a bonus dvd disc of live footage, is all we really need to tell you, to get you to hit the "add to cart" button with excessive force. But maybe even folks who aren't (yet) Confessor fanatics should check this out. 'Cause we know a lot of you like technical / progressive / math metal, and also a lot of you like traditional epic Sabbath-styled DOOM, and for that matter a lot of you like plain ol' weirdness, and that's what Confessor's unique sound was all about, and they were unique, at the Venn diagram intersection of prog metal and doom metal, characterized by riffs inspired by Sabbath and, especially, Trouble, chaotically crazy, complex stop-start song structures and time changes out of the mathrock playbook, the INSANE drumming skillz of sticksman Steve Shelton (now in Loincloth), and high pitched vocals wailing disconsolately o'er it all, which might be the weirdest component of the whole Confessor calculation.
If that sounds good, we'd of course recommend getting the Condemned album itself, it's a classic - BUT it's out of print, and also the band thinks the guitar tone is better on these demos anyway.
There's eleven songs on the cd, including all the tracks from band's three demo cassettes circa 1988-1990, plus two cuts from comps and two live tracks from the era. The cd is also enhanced with live video of the band from a show '92. Then there's the limited dvd disc, which includes tons more archival live footage of the band over the years, including video from an outdoor performance at a waterpark that the guys from The Fucking Champs always loved to talk about. Yeah, Confessor, perfect for a sunny day of fun at the waterpark, people must have been into that.
The cd booklet boasts liner notes by Jeff Wagner, who wrote THE book on prog-metal (Mean Deviation: Four Decades Of Progressive Heavy Metal, published by Bazillion Points), plus lots of old photos, gig flyers and demo tape graphics.
So it's definitely a deluxe deal, for Confessor's rabid fans and maybe some new ones too.
Earlier this year, North Carolina tech/doom metal cult act Confessor emerged from "retirement" with an ep called Sour Times, the teaser to this here full-length -- the band's second ever album and first since 1991! We were pretty excited that Confessor was back, so we gave that ep a big write-up. Here's a bit of a recap of what we wrote for those that missed it:
"A fucked up mix of Trouble and Watchtower" is how Arch Enemy/Spiritual Beggars guitarist Michael Amott characterizes Confessor, who were Earache labelmates with Amott back in his days in Carcass in the early '90s. That is indeed a very accurate and -- if you know who Trouble and Watchtower both are -- useful description of cult metal act Confessor's sound. Definitely one of the more idiosyncratic pioneers of absurdly technical metal. Not death, not doom, not grind, not thrash... but all of the above, somehow. Confessor's main ingredients are uber-insane drumming (Stephen Shelton is a god), complex song structures being navigated by two guitars and bass, and high-pitched love 'em or hate 'em vocals that seem to follow their own wailing logic, as if the singer isn't even listening to the same music as the rest of the band. Yet it works. Though perhaps not to everyone's taste. Well, after making one amazing album, 1991's Condemned, and an ep that included a Trouble cover, Confessor disappeared into even deeper obscurity, seemingly gone but not forgotten by hardcore fans of tech-metal madness (I recall our pal Josh Smith, formerly of The Fucking Champs, telling me that the Champs used to have a rule of ONLY listening to Confessor when on their way to play a show). Recently, Shelton re-surfaced in the band Loincloth, but even cooler than that, now Confessor themselves are back! Yes!"
We went on to say that the new Confessor material as heard on the ep was definitely in their old style of proggy doom mastery, with the vocals now somewhat deeper and grungier. Unraveled pretty much follows suit, with two of the ep's tracks appearing again. The lugubrious tempos, downer riffs and sorrowful vocal wailings make this sound something like a mix of Solitude Aeturnus and Alice In Chains, but way more technical (with lots of "parts" and shifting rhythms). And the drumming is as godly as ever. The way this flows, we'd say maybe this will be a little bit easier on most folks' ears than some of their old stuff, and yet it's still unmistakably Confessor and definitely worthy of their cult status.
If we had to pick a favorite, out of all the post rock / math rock / post metal hordes, a sound we do admittedly dig a whole lot, and one we can't seem to get enough of, Maine's mighty Conifer would be right there at the top. Which is saying something, as up until this brand new full length, we'd only heard from them twice, their debut, and a split with Ocean. As compared to some of the other bands who have released 2, 3, 4 maybe more records in the same amount of time. The first Conifer disc was fresh when it came out, taking classic math rock and beefing it up with huge swells of Neurosis crush, but the thing with Conifer is that they never completely buried that post rock vibe, even at their most metallic, when they were slipping into full on doom territory, they hung on to those loping rhythms, those fractured melodies, and figured out a way to infuse those elements into the roiling heaviness. On the debut we were hearing Slint and Bastro and Seam as much and as often as Isis or Neurosis, probably even more so.
In that way, the sound of Conifer hasn't changed all that much, their sound is still rooted heavily in mathrock, the metal elements more adorning the postrock instead of the other way around. In fact more than ever, they sound like a nineties mathrock band supercharged and transported to the oughts. Even at their heaviest, they don't get HEAVY, as in metal heavy, they get louder, and more dynamic, more intense, the sound gets fuller and more expansive. And this time around the band we can't help but hear all over this record is Polvo. The guitar parts are all woozy and warbly and angular and sort of seasick, the opening track is the perfect example, it almost sounds like some metal band covering the opening track from Polvo's Cor Crane Secret, with its multiple parts, its liquid arrangements, the clean guitars, layered and indeed woozy, the drum part and the arrangements, loping and mathy and not a little bit groovy. We hate to go on and on about mathrock and Polvo, cuz it could all be a big ol' coincidence, but we doubt it. Every song on Crown Fire is mathy and melodic, sometimes locking into repeating figures for just a tad longer than would be comfortable for most bands, opening up and drifting through wide open spaces, all glimmering harmonics and shuffling rhythms, backwards guitars floating in a sea of muted soft drones, tripped out almost Pink Floyd action here and there, complete with space-y synths and fluttery flutes. "Into The Gauntlet" almost sounds like a heavier Codeine, a bit doomy, with a strange lurching arrangement beneath glistening sparkling chimes, and flurries of shuffling snare drum and floor tom. Hard to say what it is exactly,
as it should be with music, but regardless, this is definitely a new high for a genre that becomes more and more overpopulated every day. Whenever we find ourselves listening to one of these new post rock / metal hybrids, as much as we love metal, and we do, we find ourselves longing way more for the intricacies and arrangements and dynamics of the post rock side of the equation, it's too easy to just turn it up and let downtuned guitars chug, and Conifer prove that you can make a super heavy, super catchy, epic record, without even bothering with faux metal chug, which is something else for sure.
If that weren't enough, the record closes with the 13 minute title track, featuring Eugene from Oxbow on guest vocals (normally Conifer are instrumental). The result is pretty excellent, and finds the band, doing their best Oxbow, a sort of abstract bluesy groove, that over the course of the song gets a little bit mathier and more complex, while Eugene sing-talks, howls, mewls, wails, growls, shrieks, moans, The track is super spare until about halfway through where it dials up the metal, offering up being churning chords and pounding drummage to support Eugene's increasingly unhinged and manic vocals, the song building to a furious climax, before drifting out in a haze of whispered mutterings and fractured electronics. It's a pretty awesome track for sure, but for us, it somehow works better when taken almost as a separate record. The first 6 tracks are so perfect together, a brilliant 38 minute post-math-metallic-rock suite, which just so happens to come with an equally brilliant bonus single song, 13 minute ep, featuring Conifer backing up Oxbow's Eugene Robinson.
However you slice it, WAY recommended!
Bands have been naming themselves after all manner of objects and creatures since the beginning of rock and roll. Heavy bands tending toward the mighty, the fierce or at least the very large. All manner of monsters and demons, various tigers and lions and even some sea creatures have been represented. But the largest, most imposing objects in nature have been sadly neglected as a source for inspiration and band-naming. TREES. So we have Conifer to right that wrong. And in doing so, judging from this ferocious slab of indie rock / metal sludge hypno-pummel, you'd certainly be forgiven for thinking this particular tree could take on any of the rock demons and metallic beasties that came before.
Conifer sleepily trawl through the dark recesses of post rock, taking the languorous slow burning churn of bands like Slint or Seam Or Bastro, all dark and brooding, simple and insistent, and stretching the riffs and melodies into expansive stretches of moody melancholy, swathed in Pink Floydian swoosh and whirl, before dropping the bomb. Massive downtuned guitars explode, splitting post rock atoms into clumps of corrosive riffage, peppered with raspy howls and screeching banshee melodies, sometimes gaining momentum and becoming unstoppable exercises in epic doomy drone-metal ala Neurosis or Isis, sometimes becoming glacial explorations into slow motion doom a la Khanate, and other times employing distorted ghostly computer vocals and buzzing psychedelia into Butthole Surfers-like sonic freakouts. A lot of this does definitely sound like Isis, Neurosis, Pelican or Buried At Sea, which is obviously a good thing, but more often it sounds like a doom-sludge A Minor Forest or a post rock Boris or a very metal Slint. Which is an even better thing!
It's pretty hard to go wrong with two heavy hitters like Conifer and Ocean, and predictably, this split lp is about as right as it gets. It's been ages since we heard from Conifer, one of our favorites of the new breed of post rock / metal hybrids, due in no small part to the fact that they tend toward the mathy / post rock side of that sound. And if anything, on this latest track (yep, one sidelong epic) they seem to have jettisoned any sort of metal completely. Not to say it's not heavy, it most certainly is, it's just not really sludgy, or that metallic, and it suits them. Right out of the gate, they lock into a super intense, relentless propulsive krautrock groove, hypnotic, mathy, complex, unfurling a super mesmerizing jam. But things shift dramatically when the vocals kick in, the band lurch into serious Harvey Milk territory, which is a very good thing, a strange crooned vocal line over a strange convoluted rhythm. Catchy, melodic, and weirdly poppy.
But the last 10 minutes or so totally seal the deal (if it wasn't already), a super stripped down Southern style (?) kraut jam, looped riff, simple propulsive drumming, and some killer guitar harmonies that go from epic and soaring to weird and warbly, and it's all we can do to not use one of our three wishes to get that last part to go on until the end of time...
The flipside features Maine's Ocean, not to be confused with THE Ocean, these guys aren't so much a part of that post rock metal thing as they are glacial doom merchants, and here they offer up a sidelong slab of multiple o'd dooooom. Things start out as a super pretty slowcore crawl, before a black hole wall of guitars drop and it's still a slowcore crawl, just a massive crushing funeral dirge of a slowcore crawl! Plodding and epic, but still haunting and weirdly lovely, sounding a lot like a metallized Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, depressive and mournful, mysterious and haunting... The vocals are a hellish howl, the guitars grinding and buzzing, a lot of this actually sounds like some unearthed slab of nineties funeral doom, albeit with that Bohren-y prettiness mixed in.
Packaged in super swank Important Records style, this time a black and white printed sleeve inside a grey and orange silk screened vinyl outer jacket, giving it a cool sort of 3-D affect. And as you might have assumed, SUPER LIMITED, only 1000 copies...
We're always on the lookout for new music metal magazines, cuz as much as we love Decibel and Terrorizer, it's the cool DIY mags that really cover the stuff we love, in a way that seems totally genuine, driven purely by a love of the music, whether it's the now defunct Oaken Throne, or Salt (not strictly metal), or Asgard Root, we can't get enough. Which is why we were so thrilled to discover the curiously named Convivial Hermit, while at the same time confused as to how we missed the first 4 issues of this incredible magazine. Based in Warmonster, Pennsylvania (!!!), TCH covers a wide array of dark and heavy underground music, black metal, doom, psychedelic folk, industrial, and pretty much everything in between, as well as artists and filmmakers and whatever the hell else they feel like. This is issue five, and it's a doozy, featuring legendary slowcore doomlords Skepticism, Chinese neo-folk outfit Baishui, USBM horde Nechochwen, Korean metallers Sad Legend, Norwegian metal outfit Wallachia, filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, Orson Welles' film Mr. Arkadin, mysterious Russian black metallers Walknut, black metallers Algaion, symphonic neo-folk group Rome, longtime aQ fave Steven R. Smith, Russian doom metal label Solitude Productions, Lovecraftian metal weirdos Fungoid Stream, funeral doom outfit Helllight, an essay on the dying art of compilations and reviews of some of the editor's faves, French Illustrator Chris Moyen, death metallers Affliction Gate, Spanish black metallers Beelzeb, German black metal horde Drengskapur, Italian black metal unknowns Adversam, an essay on hermits (!), acid folk legends and ALL time aQ faves Comus, Czech black metal weirdos Master's Hammer, French black metallers Aorlhac, legendary dark ambient soundscaper Raison D'Etre, Chinese label Pest Productions (whose releases we have featured on the aQ list recently!), an thoughtful essay on record stores and the future of recorded media (for which this 'zine would get our recommendation alone, read this!), and then of course, TONS of reviews, records, magazines, shows.
The magazine is massive, beautifully laid out, fun to read, packed with old faves and new discoveries, just might be out 'new' favorite metal mag!
Latest issue of this massive metal (and more) mag, only number six, in maybe twice as many years, but we look forward to every issue, it's sort of like Ugly Things for metalheads, but as the 'and more' above suggests, CH pushes way beyond just metal, there's industrial, folk, experimental, psych, electronic, drone, in addition to all the various strains of metal, and each issue is packed with tons of reviews, great articles and interviews, and as for the bands covered, tons of old favorites and even more new discoveries. All that and some seriously excellent writing to boot!!
So this time around, long time aQ faves Blut Aus Nord, Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, as well as Russian pagan black metallers Vspolokh, Finnish black metal weirdos Funerary Bell, neo-folkers Larrnakh, Icelandic experimental electronic duo Gjoll, Russian neo-folk combo Neutral, folkish black metallers Falls Of Rauros, German black metal horde Bergthron, old school Lusitanian BM outfit Cripta Oculta, Italian trad black metal combo Movimento D'Avanguardia Ermetico, Finnish death metal outfits Purtenance and Rippikoulu as well as a killer retrospective of Finnish death metal.
There's also UK death metallers Cruciamentum, an awesome primer on Japanese experimentalist Aube, a live review of Merzbow and Charles Cohen, post diSEMBOWELMENT outfit Inverloch, ambient neo-folkers Trial Of The Bow, spaced out doomlords Monolithe, Belorussian folk ambient outfit Dalina, ultradoomsters The Sullen Route, Israeli black metallers Dagor Dagorath, German BM horde Infestus, French black metal outfit Christicide, the Temple Of Torturous label, Philly record store Digital Ferret, a killer compendium of the worst metal of 2009-2011 (which had us sort of wishing for a whole mag's worth!), a review of 2011's Killtown Deathfest in Copenhagen and an interview with the festival's organizer, fantasy/horror novelist Joe Abercrombie, several really great essays by Convivial mainman Yury, as well as a visit to St. Peter's Village in rural Pennsylvania, some train hopping action (excerpted from another zine we love, Bogus Rendition), a bunch of zine reviews, record reviews, book reviews and more more more!
Easily one of the best, and more passionately put together music mags out there, metal or otherwise!
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In a way, it'd be way easier to review this if it was the debut album from some new, unknown band. Then we could just talk about how it's a dark, heavy album of often speedy stoner metal with cavernous, killer riffs and a seemingly old school hardcore punk edge to it, that SLAYS. There, we said it, and really, 'nuff said.
But, 'cause it's in fact the new album from the reunited three-piece lineup of seminal '80s punk/metal act Corrosion Of Conformity, the same lineup responsible for the CoC's all time crossover classic Animosity from 1985 (Mike Dean, Woody Weatherman, and Reed Mullin), it comes with a lot of baggage. Some folks, punk rock CoC purists, probably won't even listen to it, having given up on the band years ago after they "went commercial" in the '90s. And even fans of '80s CoC willing to give this a go, won't find an Animosity part II here anyway. Which could understandably have been the expectation, one subject to unavoidable disappointment. Others, into the band's latter day Southern stoner rawk thing, might not understand why they're doing an album without longtime frontman Pepper Keenan (he of Down fame, as well). So yeah, lots of baggage, that really we don't want to delve into much more here, 'cause what we're saying is, give this a chance on its own terms, it's actually damn good. This boldly self-titled album is its own beast, a blend of the old and the new really. And the trio for sure seem energized by this return (somewhat) to their roots. They sound like they MEAN it.
While Animosity it ain't, they did prove on tour not long ago that they still could rip it up on the old Animosity-era material live (causing many 40-year old fans to risk injury in the moshpit, boy that was a bit scary). And for sure some of the tracks here are written that way, like the feedback laden "Leeches" and the speedy chugger "Rat City", both barely over 2 minutes in length. But there's a lot more to this album than putting the punk back into CoC... they also bring the metal. So, it's more like if some of their (better) later stuff was done with Animosity-era attitude, by those same dudes. Certainly CoC's "Southern Sabbath" tendencies are on display on tracks like "The Doom" (natch). We know they were/are fans of Trouble, you can hear that here... Also (though it almost seems weird to say), some Melvins too.
And what about the vocals? At first, we too thought, hmm, if they're gonna have longtime bassist and former frontman Mike Dean sing again, wouldn't the idea be for him to growl and yowl like he did back in the day? Instead, he's much more melodic here than we remember (but still, sounds a heckuva lot more punk than Pepper). Dean snarls and spits, but also SINGS. And sounds pretty cool doing so, we think! Love his slightly gargled, high pitched, fists-clenched croon on the rippin' "Your Tomorrow" for instance. (Reed also takes the mic on a few tracks, too.)
So, for what it's worth to fellow CoC fans/followers, in our opinion this is definitely their best album since Deliverance, at least. And the most metal they've been since Blind. And the most punk since Technocracy.
But, we don't want only those folks who already knew what the initials CoC stand for to buy this! Anyone who hates bourgeois society but likes skateboards and Sabbath ought to check this out. Likewise if you're just into badass metallic doomed out rockin'. Like we said, it slays.
Oh, the Seldon Hunt version of the CoC skull that adorns the cover is pretty cool, by the way!
(We've got the digipack cd edition with 2 bonus tracks while they last, or the import vinyl version w/ bonus 7"...)
Boris may be the drone dirge darlings right now, but we've always had a soft spot for their more obscure countrymen Corrupted. Where Boris revel in cartoonish imagery, seventies kitsch, eighties heavy metal, bell bottoms, double neck guitars, and balls out rock and roll, Corrupted lurk in the shadows, sullen and distanced, weary and wary, crusty and curmudgeonly, wrapped in mystery, each record printed in stark black and white, a Japanese band singing exclusively in Spanish strangely enough, who are obliquely political, and much more grim and gloomy than Boris at their droniest. Every record a massive plodding slab of depressive doom, epic and monstrously heavy, but with stretches of delicate beauty. Rumors have been floating around of a triple cd, single three hour song, Corrupted release, but until that truly materializes, El Mundo Frio will probably remain the heaviest, creepiest, most beautiful, epic, expansive slab of slowcore doom drone you will ever hear. Ever. One hour and twelve minutes. A cloud of shimmering drone underpins hazy, haunting piano and warm chordal swells, plucked harps and simple finger picked guitars. For almost ten minutes, Corrupted creep along dreamily, stepping lightly, drifting lazily through a stark ambient soundfield, before the heavens collapse and the sky begins to fall in huge crushing chunks, and massive stabs of super distorted guitars swell and crumble into an abstract pounding rhythm. Completely heavy, but strangely lovely at the same time. A lilting melody is hidden somewhere beneath all that buzz and rumble. Eventually the stabs slowly mutate into a creeping, loping post rock rhythm, with minor key strums, simple shuffling drumming and growled semi-spoken vocals, before the whole thing fades to almost nothingness, revisiting the delicate shimmer of the beginning of the record. The last twenty five minutes are mostly ambient with snatches of that hypnotic post rock, and a brief but furious explosion of soul crushing heaviness with the same vocals delivered now in a glass gargling gurgle, and then the track drifts off into ten plus minutes of barely there dreaminess, mostly single notes on the harp drifting like snow flakes against a black night sky. So lovely. Easily the most fully realized 'doom' or 'dirge' track ever wethinks. So emotionally charged, so effortlessly complex and yet so utterly and beautifully simple. Somehow it's the perfect blend of Boris's Flood (our favorite Boris!), the doleful slowcore of Low, the abstract dirge of Harvey Milk, the epic expansiveness of Godspeed You Black Emperor, the metallic post rock of Pelican, the downtuned ultradoom of Skepticism, and the majestic dreaminess of Growing.
Mighty expensive but well worth it. Comes packaged in an extravagant hardcover book style digipak, with a gorgeous booklet, lots of abstract black and white landscapes, printed on vellum and overlaid other images. So nice!
It's sad but true. After 17 years, the final record from Japanese doom/sludge legends Corrupted. Or at least the last record by the original Corrupted. It seems that this is the very last recording to feature the core Corrupted members: Chew on drums, Hevi on vocals, and Talbot on guitars. Chew will go on with a whole new band, to forge a new chapter in the ongoing sonic saga of Corrupted, but Garten Der Unbewusstheit is a pretty incredible swansong for sure, and a sonically surprising one at that. Recorded back in 2009, the first thing you might notice is the title. One of the strange things about Corrupted on past records, was that all of their lyrics were in Spanish. So of course we were wondering if this time around, they would be in German. But it's hard to tell. The lyrics in the booklet are in Japanese and English, and listening to the record itself is not much help in discerning the language either, not surprisingly.
Released on Chew's newly launched label Nostalgia Blackrain, Garten Der Unbewusstheit is, at least according to the band themselves, is their most melodic, and far removed from their punk/doom/sludge roots, and "totally transcends our usual sense of time. Like feeling a minute & a second like infinity, and feeling 60 minutes & 360 seconds like moment...... this transcending sense can be described as the sense of liberation from material and life through music." Which is interesting, as we thought all Corrupted records transcended time, these sprawling epics that were so easy to get lost in, but this one in particular, is a brooding slow builder, almost more post rock that doom/sludge, the opening track, "Garten" just shy of a half hour long, drifts along spacily for nearly 8 minutes, all spidery melodies, and barely there super spare drumming, the vocals finally come in, a deep growled croon, the drums an occasional pound, but the song itself, still a shimmery drift, and then when the track does finally explode into something more heavy, it's not the lumbering dirge or downtuned doom we're used to, it's way more melodic, soaring and epic and majestic, like a doom Godspeed, the thick metallic riffs underpinned by clean guitar melodies, and slow smoldering leads, the vibe woozy and dreamlike, almost spacey and psychedelic more than dirgey and heavy, although it most definitely is heavy, just a washed out dreamier heaviness than we're used to. The band slip back into that opening chime and shimmer, and while they do offer up another couple stretches of grinding post-doom lumber, they eventually return to that dreamy drift.
The buzz of the opening track spills over into "Against The Darkest Days" before fading out and leaving just acoustic guitar, the piece revealing itself as an interlude of sorts, a lush gorgeous bit of steel string shimmer, haunting and hushed, which leads directly into the 30+ minute final track, "Gekkou No Daichi", a slow smoldering acoustic intro, a continuation of the interlude, unfurls leaving lots of space, the notes drifting in the ether, before being joined by a second more distorted guitar, the guitars tangled into a spidery woozy harmony, and then song blossoms into a massive soaring squall of blissed out heaviness, again the doomy dirge of the past seemingly replaced by something much more melodic, a slow motion creep that seems to hover and drift and soar more than pummel and pound, the track settles into a gorgeously blown out low end dirge, rife with warm melodies, the vocals a demonic bellow over the top, the drums pounding rhythmically one second, offering up abstract percussion the next, as the track progresses and nears its end, the guitars get more frenzied, the sounds more chaotic, a definite sloe build to something spacey and psychedelic and epically heavy, finally finishing off in a dense squall of black noise, but still shot through with the minor key melodies that seem to run through all of Garten Der Unbewusstheit. The noise eventually fades, and the track finishes with a stretch of hushed acoustic guitar, drifting on a sea of cymbal shimmer and fading hum. Wow.
What a way to go. A perfect finish to a nearly perfect run. The prettiest thing we've heard from Corrupted, and a heartbreakingly emotional sonic finale. We're sad to see the end of a group we've been obsessed with for nearly 20 years, but we're excited to hear the new Corrupted, and are most definitely curious about what comes next.
Sadly, the legendary Japanese label HG Fact, longtime home to sludgelords Corrupted, closed up shop recently, rendering loads of amazing records gone for good, but Corrupted managed to acquire a handful of remaining copies of this otherwise out of print doom/sludge classic, and we got as many as we could from them - not many. So this is indeed available again, for what we're guessing will be a very, very limited time...
Here's our review from way back in 2000 when we first listed the all-time classic Llenandose de Gusanos, and in fact made it a Record Of The Week:
Japanese sludge-core doom merchants Corrupted return with this monumental effort. Their previous album consisted of one long, crushing song. Llenandose improves upon that by taking TWO full discs for two tracks. WARNING: if you already intend to purchase this incredible album, read no further. Your enjoyment will be enhanced by not knowing the precise musical details that we are about to reveal...Disc one begins not with the expected wall of brutalizing guitar, but with quiet, hypnotic piano playing. An eerie voice begins to croak softly in Spanish (did we mention that for some reason Corrupted's lyrics are always in that language?) but the music is almost pretty, lulling the listener into a stupor that sets them up for the eventual entry (after 25 minutes or so!) of a slow-moving but awesomely heavy guitar/drums dirge. Eventually the piano re-enters and the disc comes full circle. Beauty and depression co-exist on this disc like none other, it's like George Winston at 16 rpm with Burning Witch playing in the background (and diabolical whispers in your head).. Disc two is the "ambient" disc, and is also really well done, a creepy quiet grey wash of sound, the sound left in the world AFTER its destruction... One of the best releases of 1999. Fans of Esoteric, recent Neurosis, Sleep, Earth, Skullflower, etc. should bow down to Corrupted. Additional information for Japanese-music-o-philes: Corrupted's drummer Chew used to play in Omoide Hatoba.
And here's a 'customer review' (which just happens to back up our claims above), emailed to us by recent purchaser-of-Corrupted and classical music fan John Botz: "The Corrupted album (Llen...Lleandos...uh...something about 'Gusanos,' i.e. 'worms') absolutely kicks ass. It's hard to accurately describe just how far beyond my expectations this album is. I was totally willing to go with Andee's recommendation on this one, but I was half expecting the three main parts of the album to be: banal, new agey, minimalist piano followed by some fairly generic bongtar sludge riffs, followed by fifty minutes of gray-washed amp noise. Not Even, dudes! These guys have obviously had some classical training, and this album is further proof of how much more depth
ANY music acquires when there is some solid classical training behind it. The opening piano section, far from sounding like ambient/new age drivel, sounds like Rachmaninoff on codeine and muscle relaxers. The entry of the 'metal section,' with portentous feedback, makes a real impact, and the choral ambience of the keyboards at the end, added to the piano sound, sinister vocals, and distorted guitar makes for an even more ominous feeling at the apocalyptic conclusion of the first disc. Wow! But maybe disc two was the most pleasant surprise of all! This is genuinely atmospheric (and good) ambient drone, with enough variety and layering of sounds to keep one interested for the full 74 minutes. I kept thinking of the spacey, eth-eerie-al, sections of 2001: A Space Odyssey (one of my two favorite movies, by the way; and my favorite soundtrack: Kubrick's choice of Ligeti's otherworldly choral/orchestral music juxtaposed with the majesty of R. Strauss, the grace of J. Strauss, and the austerity of Khachaturian's adagio was truly an inspired stroke of genius). Perhaps the Corrupted is the REAL 'Soundtrack of the Apocalypse.' Anyway, your description was apt/excellent, and this album become one of my instant favorites, not just a curiosity. And, by the way, whoda thunk that the Spanish vocals would be so effective, adding an esoteric arcaneness to the album?"
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
One of the very first releases from thee rulers of downtuned heaviness, of doomy sludge, Japan's Corrupted. Most of the folks reading this list are pretty well familiar with Corrupted, whose records rank among all our all time favorites, sludge or otherwise. We recently listed the rerecording of the group's debut album Paso Inferior, now we have a vinyl reissue of one of their very first recordings, the Nadie ep, originally releases way back in 1995! It's been remastered, has all new artwork legendary Japanese photographer Kyotaka Tsurisaki, it comes in a super deluxe gatefold sleeves, and comes with a big poster on nice thick paper, and beyond all that, it is three tracks of the heaviest, most crushingly beautiful music you'll ever hear.
Years before doom and sludge and drone was a viable musical direction, Corrupted were one of the few bands in the underground carving their own doomy slow motion path. Back in the day, they played with and toured with and shared splits with punk and grind bands, as while they may have not shared a sound, they shared an aesthetic and a DIY ethic. And even 12 years ago, Corrupted were already turning pounding drums, massive downtuned riffage and howled vocals (in Spanish of course) into something almost symphonic, majestic, epic, beautiful, while remaining punishing and brutal and heavy.
Nadie is three tracks, 45pm, two shorter tracks that pound and pummel, a third sidelong track that hints at the droniness that would infuse their later recordings, with sheets of Eyehategod-like feedback, long drawn out chords, gorgeous and trancelike, as amazing now as it was more than a decade ago, and this record definitely casts lots of the wannabe doomdronedirge outfits as unworthy to even lug Corrupted's gear around.
This is not just drone and sludge for drone and sludge's sake, these are SONGS, perfectly arranged, parts woven into other parts, melodies, and harmonies, it's incredible complex, which is why the music of Corrupted resonates, and continues to move well beyond the boundaries of the genre they find themselves defining.
The is, needless to say, totally essential. The bad news is that it is LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES! And is already out of print. We got a BUNCH, but judging from how quickly the last limited Corrupted record disappeared, these are bound to be gone in a flash.
A lot has changed since we first listed Paso Inferior nearly a decade ago. Here's our very short review from way back then:
"Japanese crust-sludge band, super slow, super heavy. Their new disc. Some facts: 1) they just toured the States. 2) their lyrics are all sung in Spanish. 3) the drummer used to be in Omoide Hatoba, Boredoms guitarist Yamamoto's weird jazz/pop project, but he quit when Omoide signed to a major. 4) this album features only one song, it's 40+ minutes long... Great vegging-out music for fans of Earth, Sleep, Eyehategod, Swans, etc."
Well, all of that stuff still applies for sure, but this is not, as we thought, a vinyl reissue of the original cd. Instead this is a rerecorded version of Paso Inferior, recorded in 2002, utilizing the same themes and melodies, but a whole new song, the A side sonically similar to the original, the B side, a droney blissed out drift, which is in fact an 'ambient version' of the original Paso Inferior!!
Since the original release, the group has released several more records, each slower and more epic than the last, even incorporating piano and acoustic guitar. And you can hear that in the reimagined Paso. Their appeal spread way beyond the punk rockers and hardcore kids who held them so beloved. Metalheads are Corrupted obsessed nowadays, as are the new breed of dronedirgedoom fanatics. But back in the Paso Inferior days, they were the underground kings of sludge, sharing splits with pretty much every power violence band that was up for it. A band that was spoken of in hushed reverent tones, but whose actual recorded output, included only a single full length, Paso Inferior.
The spirit and power of the original are definitely present, but the sound is better, heavier, and weirdly pretty in that way only Corrupted seem to be able to pull off.
One sidelong doomsludge crawl, the guitars black and viscous, the track laced with squealing washed out feedback, the vocals a growled gurgle, the drums a loping lumbering pound, recent talk of a single 3 hour song don't seem at all far fetched when listening to the reimgined Paso Inferior, there's something magical and mysterious about the music of Corrupted, no matter how slow or sludgey or stripped down, it never gets boring, it sucks you in and soothes your spirit, while it crashes and pummels, mesmerizing, hypnotic, so heavy, but weirdly transcendental.
The other half of the new Paso Inferior is another sidelong epic, this one dark and ambient, all shimmery drones, haunting melodies, mysterious voices, a dreamy drift rife with long tones, layered chords, but all muted and blurred and stretched into something more dark and lovely than grim and ominous, perfectly balancing the sludgey sprawl on the flipside.
All new artwork to go with the music, black on black, shiny on matte, the band logo and flames or drips or streaks of some kind, inside a printed insert, pressed on nice thick vinyl, and of course CRAZY limited. In fact pretty sure this is out of print now and we might be one of the only places with copies. Which means, as always, these will go FAST.
Sadly, the legendary Japanese label HG Fact, longtime home to sludgelords Corrupted, closed up shop recently, rendering loads of amazing records gone for good, but Corrupted managed to acquire a handful of remaining copies of this otherwise out of print doom/sludge classic, and we got as many as we could from them - not many. So this is indeed available again, for what we're guessing will be a very, very limited time...
Here's our review from way back in 2004 when we first listed Se Hace Por Los Suenos Asesinos (and back when Boris were still a doom/sludge band as well):
It's time.
Be afraid.
Very afraid.
Or if you're a typical AQ customer and love your rock music glacier slow, tarpit thick and skull crushingly heavy, well then, in that case there's nothing to be afraid of!
Everyone may quake and tremble when the mighty Boris unleash a new slab of black hole mega dense heaviosity. And rightfully so. Few can keep up when it comes to slow motion riffage, tectonic pummel and massive planet destroying rock. But there is another....one who came before....one who resurfaces occasionally....to remind the world that this sleeping behemoth can rise at anytime and raze all that dare proclaim themselves HEAVY. That beast...is known as... the Corrupted. One of the few bands in Japan, nay the WORLD, that can go toe to toe with Boris and hope to survive, perhaps even triumph. Some of you may remember Corrupted's massive two disc set Llenandose de Gusanos, from 3 or 4 years back, one disc of minimal drones, one disc of crushing sonic sludge (and piano). Maybe the finest document of death/doom/drone/sludge ever recorded - except perhaps for the rumoured-to-exist triple disc (!) SINGLE SONG (!!) Corrupted epic that has yet to surface. But for now, we'll have to be happy with this new 35 minute monster. The disc opens with a 17 minute ambient folk dirge, just acoustic guitar and harshly whispered/grunted vocals. In Spanish (as always) and rumblingly hypnotic. Like a ultra grim, creepily acoustic Neurosis, all stripped down and stretched out. Never imagined just a voice and an acoustic guitar could be so fucking scary, but for almost twenty minutes, the low end folk sludge stretches on seemingly forever, narcoticizing and mesmerizing, before the second track drops like a ton of lead Marshall stacks. Massively loud and perplexingly heavy, HUGE slabs of downtuned guitars pour molten riffs down your willing throat, filling you with black tar melodies, jagged limb smashing drumming, and bass so low it seems to loosen the earth's crust around you. The final track picks up the pace, to barely midtempo, but certainly a breakneck speed for a lumbering behemoth like the Corrupted. Drummer Chew (formerly of Omoide Hatoba) gets to go all Animal on this track, smashing everything within reach, the only thing keeping him behind the kit is the impenetratable wall of mile-thick ocean-deep sonic sludge, like pouring a bucket of hot molasses on a porcupine. Or dropping a sea anenome in a vat of hot glue, or like listening to Black Sabbath with your ears full of mud. Where Boris is channelling all sort of seventies rock, and stoner riffage, albeit through their own slow motion filter, Corrupted are just really fucking scary. A huge uncontainable, slithering, squirming, unstoppable, slow-motion, crusty metallic black hole.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
3 songs in 20 minutes of festering brutal heavy sludgecore 'sung' in Spanish by this band from Osaka. Features Chew, ex-Omoide Hatoba on tambor/drums.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Three-way split cd featuring a new seventeen minute long song from Japan's Spanish-speaking kings of doom, Corrupted! But that's not all. American "grindcore ninja commando team" Discordance Axis, who also rate highly in the international metalcore aristocracy, open things up with some of their drumgod Dave Witte fueled blasting, before (surprisingly) drifting into an almost-silent ambient piece! That sets things up nicely for the massive entry of Corrupted's track "Bloodscape", some HEAVY sludge as expected, but one with some also surprising "post-rock" style twists we won't reveal... A tough act to follow, but less-well-known Japanese quartet 324 acquits themselves well with three noisy, thrashy, pummelling songs, including a Crumbsuckers cover! (Hail to the old school!) Happily, we were able to get a bunch of this hard-to-find Japanese import, but judging by the way Corrupted fans are (in a word: rabid), we don't think these will last long...
Record number two from these Virginia doomlords, a crushing collection of druggy, dirgey ultradoom, a lumbering sludge juggernaut, filthy distorted guitars, crushing drum pound, hellish shrieks, but something's changed this time around, cuz in addition to those harsh vokills, there's some serious vocalizing going on, that manages to nudge Cough's sound a little bit away from filthy crusty doomsludge toward something more classically doom, we're feeling a little Electric Wizard perhaps? The band dabbled a bit on their last record, but here those vocals are way up in the mix, still wreathed in reverb and delay, but the subtle groove of Cough's stonery sludge becomes much more pronounced with those vocals, which is not a bad thing at all, the band stumbling from pure grim downtuned plodding filth to swinging Sabbathy groove, even adding some surprisingly melodic guitar leads and lush swirls of spaced out effects which produces a sort of weirdly melodic sludgey space rock, which RULES.
But fear not, the band inevitably slip back into something sludgier, but not TOO sludgey, as those clean vocals seem to outnumber the harsh vocals pretty significantly. So if you're in the market for some total Eyehategod worship, you might be better served with the first Cough record, but if you're up for some slightly more melodic heaviness, this record should definitely do the trick.
Especially if you stick around for "Crooked Spine", which is ridiculously poppy, sounding a bit like a stoner sludge version of a Codeine track, a sort of druggier, sludgier slowcore, the vocals super poppy, maybe hinting at a more melodic Cough to come.
But again, all you have to do is hold on for a few more minutes, and the title track swoops in, and flattens you with its sheer malevolent crush, a lurching lumbering sludge EPIC, complete with a killer spaced out effects laden doomdirgedrone breakdown, and a final burst of skull crushing riffage.
On first glance, you might assume this was a black metal record. The cover is all black, with intricate metallic silver inked designs, a strange pentagram like shape in the center, pentagrams on all four corners, there's even an upside down cross in the band logo. But then you realize the band is in fact called Cough. And that all around that strange pentagram like sigil in the center are the distinct shape of pot leaves.
Then the music starts with a solid 15 seconds of high end solid state feedback, before the band kicks in, and we are suddenly in druggy slow motion ultra stoner doom country, and we like it. In fact it's almost three minutes of nearly continuous Eyehategod style feedback, separated by the occasional crash of the band, before the song really kicks in, and then the band lock into a lurching druggy stoner groove, more Electric Wizard than Eyehategod, but still plenty of both. Clean vocals carry the melody, but harsh blackened shrieks pepper the landscape, the riffs huge churning downtuned black swells, about as slow as a band can get while remaining even slightly 'groovy'. And don't worry, throughout, the band pause now and again to unleash lightning bolts of high end feedback, before lurching back into action.
And so it goes. Six long songs, each blessed with a handful of kick ass riffery, oozing hate and distortion and filth and crust, the rhythms staggering from doomic plod, to druggy slither, to an almost rocking pound, the riffs slipping into Sabbath territory, but usually straying much further south. The band dabble here and there in tripped out space rock, getting a little psychedelic, the vocals wreathed in effects, the melodies crazy catchy, but no matter what, they thankfully never wander too far from their gloriously filthy fucked up drug drenched doom-ed sludge.
Now this is a match up. Two super heavy bands from Richmond, Virginia, both big time aQ faves, who in fact share at least one member. When we first heard about this split, we were like, all right!! It was obviously gonna be great, the only question was, of these two bands, who was gonna come out on top, with more bottom end? Who was gonna triumph, by being more despondent and despairing? Who was gonna win the race, to be the slowest? Well let's not make it a competition, all sludge-doom fans are winners here.
First up, Cough, who unfurl a crumbling lo-fi, weirdly psychedelic, almost electronic sounding dirge called "Athame", the guitar strangely processed, the drums a deathmarch pound, all wreathed in clouds of droned out buzz, and laced with some weird movie sample, total classic drugdoom weirdness... We were all settled in and then suddenly, the song explodes into something even more heavy, another layer of guitars comes crashing in, thick and blackened, crumbling and epic, wrapped around the weird electronic droniness of the opening, super tranced out and totally hypnotic, the kind of rare riffing minimalism, that we could literally listen to forever, no need for vocals, or more parts, or chord changes, just total doom trance bliss, and for a minute we were thinking that's just what we might get, but instead, the song splinters into something more harsh and abject, a lurching funereal creep, mathy but slo-mo mathy, lumbering and blown out, but returning to that lilting main riff/opening. The vocals have a little Electric Wizard "Supercoven" to them too, which is definitely a good thing - and then things get even weirder. A churning riff, a weird pulsating sprawl of guitar noise, chanted monotone vocals, super psychedelic and woozily warped, again, the sort of part that could go on forEVER, but sadly doesn't, the song lurching back into more stumbling chaotic downtuned doom crush, wild drumming, swirls of blurred riffage, churning and gnarled, with some cool dynamic stop start feedback breakdowns a la Eyehategod, before finally finishing off with a killer stretch of feedback drenched doom-noise pummel. Maybe the best Cough track yet!
Windhand are up next with two tracks, coming close in length to Cough's epic one. Some of you may remember their self titled debut (repressed and relisted last list in fact), which we sold a TON of. We actually reviewed it entirely before even realizing the singer was a woman, her hellish howl transcending any earthly ideas of gender. And on their tracks here, sonically, very little has changed, with super distorted riffage, monstrous drum pound, and the vocals soaring and still doused in effects. However, the vocals this time around ARE way more obviously female, the vibe much more witchy, and perhaps, unlike their debut, positioning them amidst the current crop of female fronted metal outfits. Some skeptical aQ-ers felt the sudden switch seemed a bit calculated, but even if it was, the resulting sound is pretty goddamn great. Any one into that new sound, this is easily the heaviest variant (next to Wooden Stake, perhaps), and repeated listens, to this AND the full length, reveal that perhaps it's not such a dramatic change after all. And the songs, well opener, "Amaranth" is epic, majestic, dramatic, and heavy as fuck. Some seriously crushing witchy psychedelic doom sludge for sure. The other Windhand track, "Shepherd's Crook", is even more psychedelic, opening with a tangle of swirling distorted guitar buzz, which stretches out for almost a whole minute before the song proper kicks in, and then it's a dreary, doomy plod, the lumbering tarpit riffage wreathed in swirling effects drenched buzz, that soon settles into a hazy, washed out creep, the vocals as clean as they get, the vibe almost classic old school doom at times, we hear some organs swirling just below the surface, the chord progression totally perfect, and timeless, almost like this could be some cover, catchy and hooky, the vocals epic and emotional, the music minor key and melancholic, the sound lush and layered and heavy as hell. There are some super psychedelic leads, but overall, this is just a mesmerizing sprawl of epic, doomic heaviness.
At first this heavy duty doom matchup seems like maybe it wouldn't work, sure both bands are technically doom, but both seem to exist on different ends of the doom-ic spectrum, with Cough spitting out a sludgier, more raw and crusty sort of Eyehategod meets Electric Wizard feedback drenched slow-mo crush, while The Wounded Kings traffic in something closer to true doom, more melodic, less sludgey, but surprisingly enough it works, both bands offering up some of their best material, a side long epic from each, Cough infusing some serious melody and some of that classic Sabbath sound into their lurching and lumbering pummel, while the Wounded Kings get a little bit sludgey themselves.
Hot on the heels of their amazing Ritual Abuse full length, reviewed here recently, Cough come up with a nearly 20 minute dirge that almost sounds like it could have been recorded during the same sessions (and maybe was?). Beginning with a slow spaced out bit of funereal doom, lots of space, even a tolling bell, the band soon launch into some caustic filthy blacksludge brutality, downtuned and malevolent, with some seriously sick vokills, all wrapped around a killer, main chugging riff, it's not until nearly half way through that the band decide to get all melodic, with some effects drenched vox, WAY up in the mix, all spacey and trippy, laced over that main riff, that seems to start swinging just a bit more, then there's some awesome psychedelic wah wah guitar leads, and we're in seriously classic true doom territory for sure, before eventually slipping back into the lugubrious sludge of the song's first half, and then finally an awesome layered feedback outro.
The Wounded Kings counter with a smoldering slow building intro, all whirring organs, downtuned chordal crush, eventually launching into a keyboard laced melodic lumber, a sound that could go either way, into shrieking blackness, or soaring epicness, some tangled swaths of wah wah guitar give us our first clue, before slipping right back into some more downtuned chug, but then finally, the vocals swoop in, and the sound is transformed into some epic Sabbathy true doom, the vocals growing more and more melodic as the track progresses, the guitars too, but before the song can explode, the track slips into a super minimal organ driven bit of psych prog, which rules, but only lasts for a minute or two before the song proper bursts back into action a fusion of the downtuned doom and that psychedelic prog, finishing off with an epic and dramatic climax before fading out, leaving a shadowy bit of tinkling piano.
OMG!, as they say. It doesn't happen very often, but once in a lucky while, one of us here at AQ will suddenly find out about some impending reissue and just about jump up and down exclaiming, "AT LAST!!!" We're talking about holy grails, like Bruce Haack's The Electric Lucifer, and Moolah, and Joakim Skogsberg, and Pandemonium... All of which we made Records Of The Week, by the way. So, last week we had another such exciting moment, when it was revealed that THIS album had just been reissued on cd, for the first time ever (barring bootlegs).
Not to be confused with a host of other Covens out there, this Coven was a uniquely doomy, gothic metal band from Detroit, who released but one record, 1987's Worship New Gods. No, we've never ever even seen an original lp copy - this band is pretty obscure. You might find a track of theirs on a DJ mix by Darkthrone's Fenriz, but that's about it. To give credit where credit is due, we first heard of Coven thanks to the great metal collector nerd website The Corroseum [www.thecorroseum.com], who had reviewed and raved about Worship New Gods with enough enthusiasm to get us to, ahem, track down for ourselves personally one of those bootleg copies previously mentioned. That was several years ago, but now, though, thanks to Shadow Kingdom, we've got a legit version we can happily share with all of you.
The Corroseum review said of Coven that "they sound like no other metal band that ever existed", yet went on to explain how in FEEL Coven could conjure comparisons to the likes of Cirith Ungol, Celtic Frost, Bathory, and even Bauhaus (more on that angle in a minute). We may as well quote the conclusion of their write-up: "Some dark, cloudy, angst-ridden days you cannot listen to anything else but Coven." Quite a recommendation, we had to hear 'em! And when we did, we fell in love. To the extent, that, like the Pandemonium, this became something for Allan & Andee here to daydream about trying to properly reissue ourselves. Fortunately, Shadow Kingdom were a little more proactive about that than we were, and here it is.
Pagan-proud true martial metal, '80s steel that those into the epick, eccentric likes of Manilla Road and Max Planck ought to bow down to. But that's hybridized with even heavier, doomier fare, a la Black Sabbath and Candlemass (triumphantly lumbering opening track "The Riddle Of Steel" definitely shares some DNA with Sabbath's "Electric Funeral"). That's the metal side of it. But there's more: Coven also convey a strong post-punk, '80s gothic death-rock vibe, at the same time. Think Bauhaus, The Mission, Christian Death, and 45 Grave... And, thus, like The Corroseum said, they don't sound like any other -metal- band, exactly. There's just something so haunting and magical about 'em.
What really puts these songs of blood and fire over the top are the stirring, echoing vocals, they sometimes struggle and strain, but that only enhances their emotive appeal. And, again, goes a long way to making this band indeed not sound like any other, their music massive and murky and melodic, swirling and psychedelic. Their battlecries from a bygone age are doomy and druggy (well, if Vikings did drugs) and oh so atmospheric.
Reissued with a 16 page cd booklet full of lyrics and vintage photos in both b&w and color. No liner notes, though, but in some ways that adds to the mystique, in fact, maybe they should have left out some of the photos, too...
SO glad this has been made available. Until now, all we could do, was reference 'em in our reviews of the underground epic metallers Realmbuilder, and hope that somebody somewhere would know what we were talking about. Now's your chance to find out. Don't miss it. 'Cause Coven's record is definitely some under the radar weird genius, a truly lost gem of metal, and more...
How could we resist a band called The Crevices Below, whose album is titled Below The Crevices? Hell, just check out album opener "Below The Crevices" (yes!!!), a creeping atmospheric synth heavy subterranean exploration, that does sound precisely like a field recording of what lurks just below the crevices, all blackened swirls, strange machine like rhythms, ominous melodies, anguished wails off in the distance, eventually spidery doomy guitars drift into the picture, and then suddenly, the song explodes in a frenzy of furious synth soaked black blasting, everything cavernous and echoey, the vocals a rasped bellow, the drums pounding, the guitars buzzing, but those thick droning synths transforming the sound into something weirdly alien and majestic. And then out of nowhere, in comes an impossibly melodic clean guitar part, again transforming the sound into something almost poppy, the sound slipping back and forth between that grim synthy buzz, and that soaring melodic poppiness, dense and heavy and droney and totally epic.
Not really sure how we discovered this Australian one man band, pretty sure it was based entirely on the band name, but our obsession spread, first Andee, then Allan, then fellow black metal weirdo Botanist, then aQ pal Monte. Soon after Andee played it on his radio show, and everyone wanted to know what the heck it was. And where they could get it.
So yeah, The Crevices Below, who besides being masters of synth heavy black metal majesty, also create a dark gloomy downer pop the likes of which we haven't heard since the amazing debut from Nuit Noire offshoot Soror Dolorosa, which is how most of Below The Crevices plays out: gothy, gloomy, Joy Divisiony dirges, long expanses of melancholic synthswirl doom pop, washed out and dreamily woozy,�over which a deep ominous croon, that sits right on the verge of hysteria,�wails and howls, occasionally blossoming into something much more black and buzzy, in fact most of the tracks here are a perfectly twisted fusion of goth pop and black buzz, heavy and darkly psychedelic, the synths really the driving force, swooping in to transform what ever buzzing blackness or dour broodery is taking place and turning it into something heavy and epic and mighty, and mighty twisted.
When you break it down, very little of Below The Crevices is truly black metal, several of the tracks strip away the buzz completely, leaving instead a sort of creeping poppy gloom, or some sort of softly hazy, almost shoegazey ambience. "Whispers Of Sorrow" is all spidery guitar melodies wreathed in thick swaths of synthdrone, all underpinned by skeletal drum skitter, while "Trapped In Suicidal Depths" is all gloomy and gothy, heavily effected downtuned guitars, low slung bass, croaked sinister vox, more Christian Death or Specimen than black metal, super spare, the guitars less buzzy and more warm and twangy, the vocals growing more and more anguished, and while there's a brief bit of buzzing guitars and pounding drums midway through, those quickly fade, leaving the rest of the track to unfold like some smeared eyeliner, gothic cabaret.
But bookending this goth-gloom two-fer, is one one side, "A Grand Cavernous Awakening", which might be the most black metal of the bunch, at least initially, the synths adding plenty of pomp to on otherwise grim sprawl of black buzz, while the second half of the song, slips back into moody melodic gothic doom pop, and on the other side, the record closer, the nearly eleven minute "Carrying The Cries Of The Lost", which starts off all hushed and folky, deep vox over acoustic guitar, and simple spare drumming, but then this track too explodes into some soaring buzzing blackness, those synths epic and triumphant, peeling away at one point, offering up the record's grimmest moments, pure metallic crush, only to then shift gears again, and slip into a more melodic half tempo groove, seconds later launching back into a blasting gallop, but instead of grim buzz, super dramatic crooned vox once again transform the sound into something much more gloomy and poppy, before a twisted squall of an ending, flitting from mathy angular crunch, to distorted buzz / synth swirl psychedelia.
So incredible, incredibly weird, and utterly recommended. Another black metal record of the year contender and it's only January (and yeah, we know this came out last year, but it only made it on the aQ list in 2012...)!!
The latest release from this band of heavy New Orleans doom peddlers. Formerly monolithic, monotonous sludge metal not really on par with the similar likes of EYEHATEGOD, Crowbar have now become a much more mulit-dimensioned band and are well-worth checking out. Fans of the late great Acid Bath should be aware that former AB guitarist Sammy Duet (also now of Goatwhore) has added some of the melody and imagination of Acid Bath to Crowbar's sound. One example: the beautiful piano dirge "To Touch The Hand of God". Also, there's a pretty great cover version of "Dream Weaver" to close out the album!
Doomhounds, arise from ye slumbers! The Shadow Kingdom label knows what you want, and have dug up yet another dismal dirge-like debut for your delight. Right on the spine it proudly says "English Doom" and indeed Crowned In Earth hail from that green and pleasant land, home of course to thee originators of doom metal, Black Sabbath. And so naturally Crowned In Earth echo Sabbath in spots, that's no surprise, most practitioners of the form do to some degree, from wherever they may come. But apart from Sabbath, the English Doom band this act most resembles is (early) Cathedral, especially on the disc's longest (by a smidge) track, "Miles I Walk", which clocks in at 8:59. Songs need to be that long when played with such solemn majesty (and at such molasses-like speeds). Crowned In Earth keep to a slow and plodding pace, mostly, though upon occasion they break, if not into a NWOBHM-ish gallop, at least into a spirited trot. Their sludgy but swinging riffs are adorned with singsongy vocal chant, delivered cleanly and nigh melodically, in a deep and phlegmy voice, which is one reason in particular for the Cathedral comparison. Again, we'll specify early Cathedral, circa the Soul Sacrifice ep, to get really precise. Along with the doleful guitars, the occasional touch of organ adds an extra measure of sombre regality, and brings up comparisons also to another English ensemble of doom, The Wounded Kings. While this breaks no new ground, the earth they're crowned in being far from freshly dug, this should appeal to fans of trad doom, especially Cathedral, and Reverend Bizarre, who we didn't mention already but are definitely hearing here.
By the way, it turns out that CoE are almost entirely a one-man band (but not the sort that, you know, performs that way, busking on subway platforms or whatever). Englishman Kevin Lawry, whom you'll see wandering in front of a castle with his girlfriend (?) in the cd photos, wrote all the music and lyrics, and performs the vocal, guitar, bass, and organ parts. He did however recruit a Yank to play the drums (well, both Black Sabbath and Cathedral did that too): Darin McCloskey, from Pale Divine, Falcon, and Sinister Realm. But otherwise it's all Lawry's show, and while maybe we think he could have used some help with the graphic design, he should be commended for being sooooo dooooomy all by himself. Hmm, heck, maybe that helps!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Two local (Oakland) metal bands duke it out on this split disc, one so heavy that it took four labels to put it out. Cruevo say they play "crusty sledgehammer stoner doom" while Brainoil opt to describe themselves as a "crusty wizard sludge metal" band. Well, whatever they want to call it, both bands churn out some mighty heavy, ugly punk/metal, doubtless inspired by such bands as Buzzoven, Eyehategod, Neurosis, and High On Fire. Yet more nightmare Sabbath spawn unleashed upon the world... In case it helps in your purchasing decision, here's what t-shirts the various band members are seen wearing in the booklet photos: Assuck, Spirit Caravan, Destruction, Oakland Raiders, Weedeater (we think) and Sunn.
Extra points go to Cruevo for the Shut Up Little Man! sample introducing their half of the disc.
As if that great new Isis record weren't enough, we've also finally managed to procure a few copies of this, the hard-to-find 2001 debut album by Swedish metalcore outfit Cult Of Luna, a band definitely in the heavier-than-thou, art-metal mode of fellow tortured souls Isis and mentors Neurosis (circa "Enemy Of The Sun"). Unrelenting waves of mid-to-slow-paced guitar/bass/drum punishment provide the backdrop to the vocalist's throaty screams of pain. Even with the piano and cello that decorate portions of this album, and the occasional quiet interludes offering false respite from their sheer HEAVINESS, it's pretty much a doomy trip of massive, suicidally depressing proportions, with cold, sad melodies making them not unlike a metalcore version of fellow morose countrymen Katatonia. Yeah, Katatonia + Neurosis, that about sums 'em up!
Epic blackened doom metal from this intercontinental combo, three members in Canada, one in Sweden. The four have never been in a studio together, and one of the guys has never even met the other three, but that hasn't kept them from crafting some seriously epic, dismal doooooom. Sludge-y, crusty, grim and blackened, the guitars are huge slabs of frosty crunch, the drums pound and pound, the vocals a raspy wintery howl, the tracks lengthy and mantra-like, some weird blend of Khanate's ultra funeral crawl, the post Sabbath sludge of Electric Wizard, the epic slow builds of Neurosis, old school death doom like Winter, all wound into something much more modern sounding. The vocals especially, not really black shrieks or doomy growls, instead they're some sort of super distorted harsh hellish howl, almost industrial sounding, but it suits the music, which slips from almost post rock drift, to seriously dense downtuned crush, to spaced out almost psychedelia, to churning, grinding sludge, often exploding into epic, majestic doom psych blowouts, or locking into seemingly endless chugscapes, oozing with black atmosphere, and always seemingly on the edge of total collapse, a plodding metallic deathmarch that resolves in a cloud of glitched out low end buzz. Cool. And killer diecut digipackaging to boot...
It's been four years since the last apocalyptic transmissions from this intercontinental outfit, three Canadians and one Swede (whom the Canadians have never ever actually met, so the story goes!), and now Culted have returned with another harrowing dose of monstrously overwhelming blackened sludge. Oblique To All Paths is over an hour of immersive and corrosive sonic density. 20 minute opener "Brooding Hex" initially creates a false sense of security with its ethereal plucked strings, bathed in reverb, seeming to loop like something from a hazy half remembered dream. The sound of what seems to be rustling paper adding a further surreal layer. But before long, those crumbling lumbering guitars crash to the surface like some long sleeping leviathan reawakened and suddenly all light is sucked out of the room and we're ushered into a world of anguished growls and dissonant maddening leads over terrifying earth splitting grooves. Culted often recall '90s era Neurosis or Godflesh at their most unforgiving, especially with their use of crackling spoken word recordings, looped samples and minimal hypnotic riffing. There are moments of comparative calm here as well. Swirling disorienting clean guitars are layered upon white noise. Fluttering shoegazey leads fight to surface like dying rays of sunlight peaking through black storm clouds. Tribal toms thunder beneath a wall of droning feedback creating a strange sense of suffocating peace. But even these passages act more as an ominous calm before the storm than a moment of respite, only building the dread and magnifying the intensity when those world ending guitars kick back in. Enormous and all encompassing, and while perhaps slightly more musical than the harshest of doom drone acts, there's no reason why fans of Bunkur, Monument Of Urns, Indian or our recently reviewed Legions Of Andromeda won't appreciate this swirling uncompromising black hole of a record.
We recently reviewed the debut full length from this mysterious intercontinental doom combo, whose members are spread across Canada and Sweden, and who have never met in person, and thus obviously never been in the same room together, which made that record, and this new one, all the more impressive.
But perhaps proximity isn't critical to tapping into whatever sinister spirit inspires the sort of filthy doomic crust these guys conjure up. And the sound here is plenty filthy, crusty, AND doomy, and like the first record, a little industrial. Their sound borrows a little from the likely suspects, Winter, Khanate, Electric Wizard, Neurosis and the like, but Culted take those influences and filter them through some seriously blackened sludge, some avant post rock, some industrial crunch, and twists them all up into something gnarled and psychedelic and heavy as fuck.
The two minute opener, is a lumbering chugscape, that sounds like the slower bits from say Spektr or Blut Aus Nord, stop / start churning riffage, over swirls of filthy ambience, a machine like groove, super distorted vox, a black industrial juggernaut, over way too soon, which leads into the 10 plus minute, awesomely titled "Black Cough, Black Coffin", a slow smoldering creep, droned out downtuned guitars, glacial riffage, more hellish vokills, eventually building to a lumbering blackened plod, again, the rhythm almost industrial, the guitars distorted and crushing, the track allowed a brief bit of shimmery drone, before returning to the grim grinding sonic churn, the vocals growing more and more distorted, almost Ministry style, a pounding black doom dirge juggernaut. "Dissent" is a bit more poppy, but that's really relative, a little Jesu / Nadja infused into Culted's grim black crush, with some spaced out clean guitar, billowy clouds of washed out chordal blur, the vocals buried WAY down in the mix, a strange headtripping ambient doom drift, that lurches back into caveman plod, before finishing up all post rocky, with spare percussion, hushed ambience, spidery minor key guitars, a surprisingly lovely outro.
The record finishes with the sub 5 minute "Whore", a Swans cover, which in the hands of Culted becomes a seriously twisted black doom crawl, with a woozy slippery ascending main riff, some more seriously fucked up and harrowing vokills, the sound eventually shifting to something more traditionally doomy, but still infused with Culted's sick twisted take on Swans abject clang and crunch.
