Sludge – Page 66 – Wonderbox Metal

Lord Dying – Poisoned Altars (Review)

This is the second album from US Sludge Metallers Lord Dying.

This is all about worshipping the riff and following the path of everything heavy.

Oh, and the album cover is just perfect.

Lord Dying shout and bellow their way through these 8 tracks with belligerence and a confidence born of too much alcohol and a natural ability. They know they’re better then most so why shouldn’t they show what they’re capable of?

If you’re a fan of Crowbar, High On Fire, Red Fang, Mastodon, The Obsessed, Orange Goblin, etc. then you’ll no doubt find a lot to enjoy here.

Essentially mixing High On Fire and Crowbar, Lord Dying provide a lot of meat throughout this 37 minute album. It’s not purely a riff-fest either as the band do concentrate on songs more than just stitching different guitar parts together.

The singer has a throaty snarl that has character and recalls a younger, angrier Crowbar singer. He also has a knack for catchy rhythms and vocal patterns that mark the brain like jagged grooves.

The attitude exuded from these tracks is as palpable as the riffs themselves. This is a visceral band that you feel you can almost touch, although I can’t help but imagine them being quite toxic if you did.

Very, very nice. Feel the poison flow through your veins and revel in it.

Xibalba – Tierra Y Libertad (Review)

Xibalba are a Death Metal band from the US and this is their third album.

This is heavy, brutal Death Metal that takes Hardcore and Sludge influences to make a monster of an album.

Imagine a Metalcore band that played Death Metal…yes I know that this implies Deathcore, but Xibalba are not a Deathcore band. Xibalba don’t have an easy to categorise sound. Deathcore should cover it, but no; this is a merger of 90’s Hardcore and 90’s Death Metal where Morbid Angel and Madball meet.

Classic Metal songwriting merges with Hardcore fury and Death Metal aggression. These songs really hit the spot for me as they take me back to the mid/late 90’s but translated to the modern day with a crushingly heavy production.

The band’s sound is Hellishly aggressive and recalls lost greats like Merauder and Konkhra if they got their hands on some Obituary and Crowbar riffs.

The vocals are predominantly harsh shouts that straddle the line between Hardcore and Metal, successfully merging the two styles into a vitriolic whole.

Xibalba have a meaty, beefy guitar tone that can squash a tank at 1000 metres. The punishing music perfectly captures the feeling of rolling demolition and hate-fuelled terror. Little snatches of melody appear merely to offset the heavy rhythms so that when these moments of light disappear again the riffs sound even louder and heavier than ever before.

Thoroughly enjoyable.

Abstracter – Wound Empire (Review)

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.

Unhold – Towering (Review)

Unhold are a Sludge Metal band from Switzerland and this is their fourth album.

Unhold play Sludge Metal with a good grasp of Space Rock, Doom, Post-Metal and Progressive Metal.

The band boast multiple talented singers and each of them brings something to the table, be that Neurosis-style rough vocals, effortless cleans or powerful female vocals.

This is a diverse selection of tracks that feature shades of light and dark, build and release mechanics, dynamic pacing, rich texture and atmosphere by the bucketload. You can just taste the quality dripping off this album like fat.

A warm sound translates into tracks that feel very organic and natural. These songs sound alive and vibrant.

I love albums that feel like a complete listening experience; where each song seems to have its place and has its own identity. Towering is such an album.

Whether it’s gritty Sludge, colossal Doom, Southern-baked meandering or epic Progressive workouts, Unhold play their songs with style, conviction and depth.

There’s a lot of variety here that’s a pleasure to explore. The band have both the discipline and experience to craft songs that have a large amount of depth and longevity. The tracks are composed in ways that seem effortless and unforced. Ideas from all manner of subgenres and styles are incorporated into their repertoire and it seems that every aspect of musical expression they dabble with comes out a winner.

Unhold have produced an exemplar of Sludge Metal that’s going to be hard to top. Be sure to check them out.

Cowards – Rise to Infamy (Review)

Cowards are from France and this is their second album. They play a brand of Hardcore that’s a blend of Sludge and Black Metal.

This is the kind of discordant, ugly, abrasive, extreme Hardcore that I absolutely love. Throw in a Blackened Sludge influence as well and you’ve a love affair just waiting to happen.

Well, actually it’s been happening ever since I discovered their début album really, but this new one affirms it.

Cowards incorporate interesting ideas and riffs into their aural assault and every song brings something slightly different to the table.

The granddaddy of this style is, of course, the mighty Converge. Cowards take the template laid down by the masters and dirty it up with Sludge and Black Metal influences until it’s firmly their own. I like a band that stamps their own identity on the style of music they choose to play; Cowards do this with jackhammers.

Toweringly slow, blisteringly fast, chuggingly heavy, Blackly aggressive, sadistically spiteful…I could go on. Suffice to say that Cowards have created an album that’s heavy and extreme in all of the right ways.

And have I mentioned the riffs? There are some choice ones on here. Slow, fast, atypical, angular, you name it.

The singer is appropriately intense throughout. This kind of music needs a singer who sounds like he’s about to lose it and explode into a fit of violence and this is what we get.

Great stuff. If you like music that’s heavy and aggressive you’ll love Cowards.

Evisorax – Goodbye to the Feast..Welcome to the Famine (Review)

Evisorax are from the UK and play Grindcore. This is their latest EP.

Violent, intense and uncompromising; Evisorax have entered the building.

What can you say about Grind as demented as this apart from advising people to run as far away as possible? This is only advice to the normal people of course, for if you’re a fan of Grind then you should be hurrying to embrace the carnage that Evisorax deal as quickly as you can.

Evisorax are a whirlwind of destruction. It’s an apt image as their music twists, turns and convulses in ways that defy the listener to keep up.

I’d say if you combine the intensity of Discordance Axis, the unhinged brutality of Brutal Truth and the Sludgy extremity of Labrat then you’ll have a starting point for Evisorax.

Hidden behind the pure maelstrom of visceral lunacy that they play the band have a strong sound and actually have compositional skills. To the uninitiated it may seem that a band like this simply turn up, turn on and play whatever they like, but to the Grindcore connoisseur it’s clear that thought and refinement has gone into these tracks.

They may know how to unleash chaos but it has it’s own warped version of dynamics and pacing, which only increase the power of the impressive noise that they create. This is especially apparent on the penultimate track So Many Fat People, During the Famine, which sees the band expand their sound into wider Extreme Metal territories.

I was already a fan of Evsiorax’s 2011 release Isle of Dogs, but this new one has taken the extremity to a whole new level, and I love it.

Get this.

Stheno/Grassroll – Wolfkind – Split (Review)

Stheno are a Blackened Grind band from Greece.

They start this split off with just under 7 minutes of Crust-fuelled terror the likes of which will have most people running for the hills. It’s underground, brutal and terrifying.

The vocals are savagery incarnate and come off completely unhinged; serrated growls that don’t sound even vaguely human. Crikey. Sharp high vocals occasionally cut through the meat of their sound too but it’s the deep vocals that do it for me.

The songs are very energetic and I like how it’s not all blasting; the band pace themselves well and give a very aggressive display without resorting to Grind-by-numbers.

These short songs hit the spot and the Blackened Crust influence in the riff department is a welcome change from the Grindcore norm.

A very enjoyable few minutes of ultra-violence from Stheno.

Grassroll are also from Greece and play Grindcore with a dash of Sludge. They contribute just over 6 minutes of fast, insectile Grind to the split.

The singer has a voice that’s so high and maniacal as to sound scarily barbed. Her vocals scar, maim and lacerate. Deep growls occasionally punctuate the tracks but for the most part it’s static-like screams, reminiscent of Discordance Axis. Overall it’s the opposite of Stheno really, who mainly use the deeper vocals.

There’s a slight Sludge hint to their sound in some of their riffs; enough to perk the interest but not enough to detract from the pure demented aggression of these songs.

Grassroll like to play fast and hard, and who can blame them?

Short and to the point, this is a worthy split between these two bands. Both contributions are different enough that the songs on this split are obviously by distinct bands yet their shared base genre allows them to complement each other well.

This is one split to check out for sure.

Fleshworld/Gazers/Viscera/// – Split (Review)

This split is between Polish band Fleshworld, French band Gazers and Italian band Viscera///. All three bands play variations on Post-Metal/Doom.

Fleshworld kick off the split with 18 minutes of music spread across three tracks. We’ve met Fleshworld before with their début album Like We’re All Equal Again. They play Post-Metal with very harsh vocals that act as a counterpoint to the emotive music. Continue reading “Fleshworld/Gazers/Viscera/// – Split (Review)”

Amniac – Infinite (Review)

Amniac are from Greece and this is their début album. They play Post-Metal.

This is Post-Metal that’s largely moulded after the trinity of Isis/Neurosis/Cult of Luna, although they also have a more Metal quality to their sound akin to Gojira; both bands share a love of emotive, winding leads as well.

The singer has a clear and powerful voice. It’s legible and deep at the same time. It’s a very strong focal point for the band to have and he puts in a commanding performance.

The music is equally strong and commanding though and ultimately this is the real star on Infinite. The build/release nature of Post-Metal is present and correct, although Amniac are probably a bit heavier than some who play this style, with chuggy Metal riffs and Sludge influences thrown into the melting pot.

Amniac seem to have a firm grasp of good songwriting skills and of what makes a good riff. The guitars are very emotive and manage to carry the emotional content well whilst retaining that strong and forceful side.

This is a very accomplished album, especially for a début; lots of thought and skill has clearly gone into its composition.

Give Amniac a listen. Highly recommended.

Mudbath – Corrado Zeller (Review)

This is the début album from France’s Sludge/Doom behemoths Mudbath.

The first song opens slow and heavy, just the way we like it. Then the vocals kick in and I’m floored by their harshness. These are screams that sound so ragged that they can’t be human, surely?

It’s like serrated liquid glass has been made into diamond-sharp nails and scraped down the world’s largest blackboard. Couple this with the lumbering, crawling music and I’m in Doom heaven.

The first track keeps up the slow assault for over 10 minutes before introducing a bit of melody at the end and then finally collapsing under the sheer weight of itself. Class.

The second song starts off more upbeat but no less harrowing. It soon descends into apocalyptic Doom territory though and all memories of warmth, light and happiness simply evaporate. It picks up the pace once more near the end and the throat-shredding nature of the vocals goes into overdrive.

The final song is almost 18 minutes of nihilistic venom and heavy Sludge evil.

This is a crushing début. If you love all things slow, Heavy and Doom then Mudbath are not to be missed.