Huntsmen are a US post-metal band and this is their debut album.
Huntsmen mix doom, stoner, and progressive American metal into their textured post-metal melting pot, resulting in 41 minutes of engaging material. Continue reading “Huntsmen – American Scrap (Review)”
Forming the Void are a progressive stoner/sludge metal band and Pyreship are a post-metal band, both are from the US.
Forming the Void open the split with a single six and a half minutes of pleasant and personable modern progressive stoner metal. Continue reading “Forming the Void/Pyreship – Split (Review)”
This is the second album from Belgian post-metallers Hemelbestormer.
Having enjoyed 2016’s Aether, listening to A Ring of Blue Light was a no-brainer really. On this second release Hemelbestormer’s atmospheric metal has not disappointed. Continue reading “Hemelbestormer – A Ring of Blue Light (Review)”
Sixes are a doom/sludge band from the US and this is their debut album.
You know that you can never, ever have enough filthy, ugly doom, right? I mean, it’s just not possible.
Enter Sixes.
Methistopheles is a colossal 62 minutes of feedback, Earth-shaking distortion, apocalyptic melodies, and throat-destroying vocals. And boy does it grab you and not let go until the bitter end. Continue reading “Sixes – Methistopheles (Review)”
Lowered are a blackened doom band from the US and this is their debut album.
Lowered play black/sludge/doom metal with skill, talent, and no small amount of grim mood. Continue reading “Lowered – Lowered (Review)”
This is a collaboration between Japanese multi-instrumentalist Keiji Haino and US post-metal band SUMAC.
SUMAC feature an impressive calibre of members, (Isis, Baptists, Russian Circles), so it’s a real shame I’ve never encountered any of their work previous to this. Keiji Haino I’m even more unfamiliar with, but it seems he has built up a significant body of work and collaborative projects over time. Continue reading “Keiji Haino & SUMAC – American Dollar Bill – Keep Facing Sideways, You’re Too Hideous to Look at Face On (Review)”
New Gridfailure. Great. More nightmares tonight for me. Why do I even bother listening to this kind of stuff? I mean, what’s to like here? Is it the urbanised terror of an impending soulless apocalypse? Is it the gradually-encroaching realisation that everything you have ever loved and everyone you have ever known will eventually be taken form you? Is it the digitised psychic pain of countless trapped, hopeless lives? No? Then what? I’m really asking. What draws you, and me, to listen to something like Gridfailure. If you’re reading this then you must have at least a passing interest in hearing the aural equivalent of long-buried mental scars burrowing their way to the surface, so why do you subject yourself to it? Why do you, actively, probably passionately, seek out this experience, a horrific, mind-killing experience like Irritum? Go on, tell me. Please. I’m begging you. Because try as I might, I can’t help but really, really like Gridfailure’s work, so I need to know why I’m so irresistibly drawn to it. Maybe this says more about me than the music, but there’s something maddeningly relaxing about having your ears slowly bleed as you endure the 52 minutes of grim soundscapes that occupy the radiation-blasted landscape of this album’s playing time like corrupted mechanical cockroaches. Something about Irritum calls to me in binary, demanding to be understood by my hopelessly out-of-date grey matter, clawing at my subconscious, like a cyberdaemon being birthed behind my eyes. I mean, what the Hell? Why can’t I let go? Why do I rate this stuff so highly? Why do I think that Irritum is actually some of the best material that Gridfailure’s twisted controlling intelligence has conceived and unleashed so far? Maybe I’m just in pain, in deep, internal pain, and Irritum soothes me, by letting me know I’m not the only one suffering. Or maybe I’m just a masochist, torturing myself with prolonged exposure to industrialised fear. Or maybe I’m just deceiving myself. Maybe I’ve known the truth all along. In fact, I know I have, I’ve just been unwilling to admit it to myself, as if admitting something as terrible as this would make it somehow even more real than it already is. The real, true secret is terrible. Of course it is. The truth is, that I
Crawl play blackened doom, and Leviathan play black metal. Both are solo artists from the US and have got together to birth this hideous, reeking mass of unpleasantness.
This split lasts 24 minutes, with each artist contributing a single track lasting 12 minutes exactly. Continue reading “Crawl/Leviathan – Split (Review)”
Apostle of Solitude are a US doom metal band and this is their fourth album.
So, the mighty Apostle of Solitude return! It’s been a long time since 2014’s Of Woe and Wounds, which I rated on my 2014 end of year best of list. Continue reading “Apostle of Solitude – From Gold to Ash (Review)”
Mournful Congregation are an Australian funeral doom band and this is their sixth album.
I like music that’s bleakly heavy, crushingly slow, and agonisingly despondent. Therefore, I like Mournful Congregation.
It seems like an age since the band’s last foray into despair that was Concrescence of the Sophia, but now they’ve finally appeared from the shadows once again to bless us with more of their monolithic funeral dirges. Continue reading “Mournful Congregation – The Incubus of Karma (Review)”
Wonderbox Metal 