This is the third album from Canadian doom/sludge metal band Heron.
Featuring 37 minutes of material, Heron have produced a very tasty underground gem on Empires of Ash. Instantly engaging, despite its caustic nature, this is the sort of album that doom and sludge aficionados should hungrily devour. Continue reading “Heron – Empires of Ash (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 third album from Australia’s Mekigah. They play Industrial/Classical Doom.
This is a tortuous combination of Doom, Noise, Industrial, Ambient and Classical that somehow ends up pulling you into its embrace before you even really know what’s going on. I’m not a huge fan of Noise and a lot of Ambient leaves me cold, usually because there’s nothing to draw you in. Litost is different.
Here we have elements of Noise and Ambient but they’re joined by the usually far more spirited Classical style. Orchestral sounds and emotive synths provide these minimalistic elements with a vibrancy, albeit a dark, malevolent one.
On top of this we have the Industrial aspect to their sound, and, of course, the Doom. This is not a guitar-oriented project though. It’s there, but used just as one instrument of many. Guest musicians aplenty feature on this release, providing everything from vocals, to mellotron, to taishgoto.
Vocals are few and far between. When they appear they’re quite varied and performed by multiple singers across the album. They’re usually quite low-key and are frequently employed as just another method of delivery; another instrument in this disturbing symphony.
This album is surprisingly emotive and engaging. The layers of synths and orchestral sounds work perfectly with the harsher Industrial base to fashion songs that work their way into your subconscious like hooks into flesh.
There’s a Gothic element to this music, but it’s one that has been killed and buried so that its influence is felt through the remainder of the thing that’s growing in its place. Almost as if the remains of a Gothic ancestry were feeding the music we hear here, so that the influence seeps into the cellos and Industrial sounds almost without anyone noticing at first.
If you’re into music that fuses the Industrial and the emotive with a dark atmosphere then this is definitely one to track down. Whether you’re a fan of Ævangelist, Axis of Perdition, Cloak of Altering, Ulver or Indian, Litost has something to offer you.
A very impressive release; I wasn’t expecting something to merge darkness and light so completely. Litost is a thing of grim beauty.
This is the second album from US Sludge/Doom band Abstracter.
After really enjoying their 2012 debut album Tomb of Feathers, this is a release that has been eagerly awaited in these parts.
The first track, Lightless, seems to slowly writhe up out of a dark pit of urban decay, attempting to smother the land with its malignant spread. It’s an insidious start to the album and before you realise what’s going on you’re trapped in a nightmare landscape of pitch-black smoke and evil.
But oh dear Lord is it good. Rarely has cloying, suffocating Sludge felt so visceral and nastily enticing.
Abstracter are heavy and grim in the best ways that Sludge and Doom can achieve. These songs are essays in crawling malevolence and destructive passion. The band emanate a very raw darkness that you can feel like a physical presence.
I like the combination of nuanced riffing, heavy guitars and brutally gorgeous delivery. Abstracter effortlessly combine the beauty of Post-Metal with the dirty horror of Sludge. Their songwriting skills are such that moments of ugliness and transcendence are merged together. When the shades of light and dark clash there’s only ever going to be one true winner, but even though the menacing and murky atmospheres encase everything, the light isn’t totally consumed; you can feel it pulsing, straining against its captivity by this Hellish beast. This tense undercurrent is what gives Wound Empire its hidden beauty.
There’s a Black Metal influence to their sound that fits flawlessly into what they do. It’s not overbearing and doesn’t detract from the Doom, it just adds a further layer of thickly encrusted grime to songs that are already intimately familiar with all things subterranean.
With each of these titanic monuments to apocalyptic dystopian futures, I think that Abstracter have outdone themselves and actually managed to top their début album. No mean feat.
With true depth of composition and a talent for wrapping the listener up in their vision of all things gloomy and heavy, Abstracter have produced an album that has blown me away.
Fans of Neurosis, Altar of Plagues, Indian, Inter Arma, Amenra, Yob, Wolvhammer, Thou, etc. should perk up and take notice now.
Essential listening.
Indian are from the US and play Sludge Metal with added Noise; this is their fifth album.
This is Sludge of the most vicious, harshest variety. These six tracks assault the listener with guitars as heavy as icebergs and enough dissonant noises to floor a bear.
The crawling, abrasive sound leeches all of the warmth from the air as the feeling of cold, impersonal, urban bleakness saturates the sound waves.
The onward march of the devastating riffs is relentless and disturbing. Had the band limited itself to this it would be a monumental attack, but with all of the feedback, squeals, pops, crackles and noises that accompany the songs at just the right level of intrusiveness they are transformed into even more unapproachable entities than they would be without these additions.
The vocals match the intensity of the music, coming across as the bastard mutated offspring of a twisted three-way between the singers of At The Gates, Khanate and Iron Monkey. As impressive as it is harsh; the vocals are as unrelenting as the music they screech over.
If you’re tough enough to survive this aural onslaught then there’s no reason not to return to this again and again and again. Crushing.
Wonderbox Metal 