Fvnerals are a German doom band and this is their third album.
Bringing together doom, shoegaze, and dark ambient into a 40-minute cataclysmic declaration, Let the Earth Be Silent is the end times given aural form. Continue reading “Fvnerals – Let the Earth Be Silent (Review)”
This is the debut album from Absent in Body, an international doom/post-metal band.
Featuring current and ex-members of Amenra, Neurosis, and Sepultura, Plague God gives us 36 minutes of sludgy industrial post-metal to become lost in and horrified by. Continue reading “Absent in Body – Plague God (Review)”
Lunar Ark are a blackened doom band from the US and this is their debut album.
Each of the three tracks on this 49-minute album is a hideous, heaving monstrosity of grim blackened sludge and malevolent drone doom. It’s deeply nasty stuff, yet not without redeeming features. Continue reading “Lunar Ark – Recurring Nightmare (Review)”
This is the debut album from Bethmoora, a doom/sludge band from Denmark.
It’s good to hear such a malignant slab of filthy doom-fuelled hateful sludge like this now and again. It strips away pretentions and allows you to get a good long hard look at the muck and grime. Continue reading “Bethmoora – Thresholds (Review)”
Vile Creature are a Canadian doom band and this is their third album.
2018’s Cast of Static and Smoke was a notable album, both musically and as a conceptual work that was fleshed out by a short story. Vile Creature have now returned, and what they have unleashed on the world is a superlative piece of heavy art. Continue reading “Vile Creature – Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm! (Review)”
Sloth Hammer are an experimental sludge/doom band from the UK. This is their second album.
No guitars, two vocalists, two electronicists, (is that a word?), two drummers, and plenty of bass, Sloth Hammer bring the pain on their second album across a colossal and punishing 78 minutes, recorded live and improvised. Continue reading “Sloth Hammer – Superbia Ira Acedia (Review)”
November was a strong month for metal. Both death metal and doom are well-represented below, but as we’ll see more than just those two genres produced some great records in the past month. November saw a strong showcase for UK talent too, as five of the below bands are all from this country. Continue reading “Monthly Overview – the Best of November 2018”
This is the second album from UK doom/drone band Bismuth.
Ever since first hearing The Eternal Marshes I’ve been a fan of what Bismuth do. Over the years they’ve continued to develop their bass-drum-synth-low-end-heavy-doom-assault-on-the-senses approach to music. Every release essentially sees them rising to new heights of both extremity and nuance, and this has now culminated in this new colossal album. Continue reading “Bismuth – The Slow Dying of the Great Barrier Reef (Review)”
Black Tar Prophet are an instrumental Sludge/Doom band from the US. This is their second album.
This is heavy. This is slow. This is DOOM! This is good.
The band live up to their name, with Sludgy, bass-heavy riffs leading the way in a tsunami of sound designed to crush the senses and render the mind inert. Sonic sensory overload.
Destructively slow riffs meet with, (sometimes), up-tempo sections and pummelling drum rhythms to create forceful and energetic songs that soak up the raw essence of what it means to be Sludge, even when only playing for a short time; Judgement Whore is only 1:40 in length for example, but is pure filthy Doom greatness.
Imagine a mix of Eyehategod, Bismuth, Ghold and Khanate; now remove the vocals, remove the guitars and distil the essence into, (mostly), short songs. Black Tar Prophet are here. All hail.
This is a little something for all those who worship at the altar of sloooooow. Almost a UK version of Burning Witch/Khanate; the basic template should be familiar to anyone into this kind of doom, although Bismuth inject enough of their own personal brand of misery and woe into the music to differentiate it from their peers.
This is a one-track release lasting 16 minutes and every single minute is a hymn to distortion and doom. Bass, drums and tortured screeching.
Slow and agonised; the music drags itself into the darkest corner of your forgotten fears and festers, waiting patiently and growing all of the time. Occasional screams of growing pains punctuate this hidden time bomb of malignancy like something trying to escape, but ultimately realising the futility.
This is doom. This is slow, bass-heavy, doom. There is nothing else.
Wonderbox Metal 