Fehler - Adharma

"Adharma" is the debut five-song EP from Dutch trio Fehler (released by Black Death Records), and I have to say, these guys are delivering one of the most literal and unique combination of hardcore/punk and sludgy metal I've ever heard. Dark, discordant textures and winding bass-lines with a mid paced doom/sludge type of vibe are contrasted by frantic, chunky power chords and subtly rocked out riffing delivered in hammering, fast-paced bursts of hardcore/punk energy – while fronted by ultra gruff snarls that work well over any and all approaches alluded to by the instrumentation. On top of that you'll find bits and pieces of searing feedback, a well-integrated sample or two, the occasional spout of ringing post-hardcore dissonance, and even a few more chaotic riffs that almost have a weird black metal feel!? Seriously, there's a lot going on, but what's great is that the band pulls it off perfectly. The songs don't feel disjointed in any way, and the entire 17-minute listen is a shockingly cohesive experience given the breadth of influences they're drawing from.

Awesome.

Lord of Bukkake / Warchetype / Sons of Bronson - Split CD (2009)

Three totally different bands all hailing from Spain jam together to release of the finest doom albums of the year. Its great to see how all the three bands play an altogether different style of doom from one another.

While Warchetype have a style similar to none except may be DESIRE (does that ring a bell?), They are more of your traditional styled doom mixed with vocals that are often slow and rumbling with occassional growls on occasion. There is a single 20 minute track on the album.

Lord Of Bukkake have achieved a cult status among the newer breed of sludge bands. If you like your sludge to be slow, dirty, muddy with hateful vocals, LOB are your best bet. Again this band will gratify you with an extraordinary masterpiece of sludge track that is almost 19 minutes long.

Sons of Bronson is the most unique of them all. You wont find them listed on metal archives (hey guys, may be they aren't METAL ENOUGH, lol)! Its really difficult to classify the kind of doom they play. How about labelling them as experimental doom. The one band that they remind me of are Infidel?/Castro! considering how they have used similar strong walls of noise among all the chaotic riffs! Absolutely the best of the lot in this split.
Holy Shit!

The Misanthrope Project - Your World Is Sickening

TMP harness an off putting and unfriendly vibe over the course of these five epics of fucked up doom and gloom. Part Mugwart/Beaten back to Pure southern scum, part Grief/early Buzzov*en slug trail terror and part Yobian, psychedelic glory, the quintet rounded out by Justin (guitar), Ahmasi (bass) and Joey (drums) are one of the most unique entities going in the American sludge/doom underworld right now. The instruments are laden with effects and cosmic ambience, but the riffs, low-end and general groove clamp down on a number of scathing, world decimating moments that will keep your head nodding and your whiskey bottle empty, as this is music perfectly accompanied by a big, plentiful fifth of Wild Turkey.

Beasley is as pissed off as ever; whispering and screaming like a demon beneath a blanket of blown out distortion and suffocation. Drummer Joey is a particularly key component to the mix, locking down the band’s sound with a requisite doomified crunch, but also getting wild and fill crazy in the vein of John Stanier’s tightest Helmet performances.

TMP wraps a threatening aura around your head from the very first note. Beasley’s haggard scream thunders in the distance, before the volume kicks in full bore with twin guitars blazing through plundering riffs and psychedelic leads alike, as the effects swirl around your ears from a seemingly inexplicable number of amps and directions. This is a cyclone of endless noise and drugged out vocal shouts, with a grasp on overdriven Beaten Back to Pure metal as played by Kirk Fisher with Mike Scheidt coordinating the affair and offering musical mysticism. There’s a moment of sampling, with cleaner dissonant guitars that frighteningly feels as if the song’s going to come out of your speakers and beat the living fuck out of you, as you sit there knowing damn well the band is holding back for one last outburst at the end, to create a proper emotional catharsis.

Lush bass lines provide the perfect foundation for Vince and Justin to weave their shimmering, doom influenced chord progressions around. Less than a minute slowly wanders by in this glorious, almost Hawkwind meets Yob passage.



You want a sick scream you go to Charlie. You want a sick riff/groove and production job, you go to Vince. You get them both here, and with three other giants backing them up…well the sky is the limit. The groove in this part of the song is one that can be effortlessly lumped into the legendary realm, with Joey’s pounding emphasis on fills and complexity adding even more life to the unholy din.

Fans of that whole psyched out doom/sludge movement such as Yob, Soulpreacher, Sleep and Warhorse will eat this tune up for their three daily squares from here to eternity. Sludge fans…you need this, so pick up their releases and see if you can wrangle this record off of one of the band members. Shit this good, cannot be doomed to obscurity! ~ Slightly edited Hellride review

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Dopethrone - Demonsmoke

The Throne was established in March 2008 as a completely D.I.Y. project created in the very core of Hochelaga. After only 3 weeks of legendary drunkenness and sacred bong worship, Dopethrone already composed 4 songs and was talking about an album concept... A year later, the new album: "DEMONSMOKE" was materialized. In the spirit of "Do-It-Yourself", The Logo and concept was created by Vincent (guitar - vocals), the recording by Thomas (drummer) and the CD was produced by Vyk (bassist)...

The band with a name like that, in unsurprisingly a blend of stoner and demonic sludge along with a tinge of traditional doom. With a look to back to old school sludge with the hatred and filth dripping out of the bands' amplifiers along with a certain influence of modern sludge (no, not bands like Cult Of Luna and The Ocean), this band will be loved by fans of bands such as Bongzilla and Weedeater.


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Eggnogg - III

EGGNOGG is a hard rock/sludge band from the upstate New York area. Having gone through several names/stages of music already, Eggnogg has matured into a heavy-hitting sludge-rock group of epic proportions. This year, they recorded the first album: simply titled "The Three". The album was officially released on October 31, 2009. With the heavy drumming, back-breaking riffs recognizable deep, growling vocals, Eggnogg has created a heaviness no band from the stoner scene has truly achieved since Electric Wizard's "Dopethrone."

As already mentioned the band's primary influence is Electric Wizard, but the other influences lie as a cross between 70's hard rock, Kyuss, Alice In Chains, Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd.

Experience this

Cortisol - Meat (2005)

Truly heavy nauseating sludge that will cause your walls to crumble down. Unbelievably heavy! Its Eyehategod slowed down 5 times and with vocals that are more hateful than dystopia or goatsblood and a guitar tone that will give nightmares to Khanate's dude (whatshisname?. Shit's good!
RAPIDSHIT

Burning Witch - Bootleg (Seattle, Washington 04-06-1996)

The only thing I know about this bootleg is that it is rare as fuck and I love to dig rarer stuffs, I am yet to listen to this. But cmon guys, Its Burning fuckin Witch, Can It ever fail?? I doubt it!

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Haarp - 2009 EP

How rarely it happens, that you stumble across a picture of the band that describes it's music rather than being just a picture. Haarp, a band similar to NOLA in some ways released, the 2009 E.P., with the same lineup, has a harsher guitar sound and adds the bass guitar fuzz more typical of the genre, as well as nearly doubles the track times as compared to their demo. The shortest track being over seven minutes, and the album feels more like a a mental asylum, a man, the epitome the insanity locked in a cage, superbly angry and unable to control it, trying to scream his lungs out at the desperation and sheer unimaginable hate for the world and the lives of the people which it supports, rather than a collection of songs.
The tracks have a lot of variations, sometimes sounding like a fuzzed out stoner record, to a mellow and moody section to the lost tracks of some Bay Area Thrash band. The compositional skills have increased manifold on this release, as compared to the one 2 years back. This band will go somewhere in it's life, and they seem to have found the way.

Mons Sermo Incendia, is simply superb.

Haarp - Demo

Haarp blends the tortoise-tempo molasses chugging onslaught of traditional sludge metal with bard-like tale telling, mature harmonic composition, and low, guttural vocals that would impress even today's dethcore generation. Though somewhat new to the scene the band already boasts supporting slots on a tour with Down and The Melvins. While most sludge metal bands utilize introspective lyrics focused on addiction, suicide, and self-loathing, Haarp are epic storytellers, weaving elaborate tales of gods and monsters. The southern pentatonic bends and blue notes that typified the genre ten years ago have been replaced with straight-rhythm, dissonant riffs that have more in common with Superjoint's Use Once and Destroy than Eyehategod's Southern Discomfort. It's still very slow music, but one can see that many metal genres gave birth to Haarp. The recording quality is another matter of differentiation. Don't get me wrong; you can still feel the sticky floor of a New Orleans barroom when you listen to it (like most sludge records), but unlike many of their contemporaries, Haarp invested in overall mixes that are clear and crisp, with veteran New Orleans engineer Bruce Barielle mastering the stuff.

The 2007 E.P/ Demo begins with guitar feedback and an unedited drum count-in like many sludge records, but opts for the cleaner bass guitar sound found in more traditional metal genres, rather than the fuzz-saturated bass sound of many stoner and sludge recordings. The first track, "Soothsayer" begins slow as expected but builds to a nice, up-tempo groove reminiscent of stoner bands like C.O.C. and St. Vitus. The riffs in "Blackhand" bring to mind a slow motion murder scene from a horror movie. "Fog Cutter" is an interesting track, with two guitar solos that could not be more different from one another in style, building into a section that is moody, mature, and melodic. The main tempo of the song generates that wonderful urge to slowly nod the head like a pump jack on an oil pad, and just when you think they're going to speed it up they run the slow riff for another 40 seconds. "Synthetic Sense" feels like it could be a newly-discovered track left over from a Crowbar or Acid Bath session, so much so that I kept instinctively expecting Dax Riggs to make a vocal appearance. The dynamic tempo changes of "Dissemination" register very much like a non-sludge record, reminding me more of Gojira or Mastodon, and the track definitely supports Haarp's diversity of influence." ~ (directmetalmusic.com)

Dowbload

Shroud Eater - Demo 2009

This is a 3 piece band that has released it's first release, a demo this year. With a female handling the vocal duties, this band plays sludge, the down-tuned way mixing the grooves of stoner metal, to the in your face style attitude and vocals of punk rock and elements of early 90's alternative rock.
They sound really original, and unconventional with this 3 track demo lasting a little less than 14 minutes with all tracks lasting near, and around the 4:30 minute range.
They sure have the talent, but not much can be said just by listening to 3 tracks by a band. This not groundbreaking or extra ordinary but it bring a breath of freash air, and is enjoyable. Rumor has it, they plan to release their debut next year, and I definitely suggest you look forward to it.

Mediaphyre

Wake Up On Fire/In Memory of Kevin Hannigan

Wake Up On Fire was a truly excellent band from Baltimore, Maryland. A ton of other people have done better jobs than I ever could of summarizing their extremely eclectic and unique multi-drummer, multi-vocalist, cello-centric, combination of atmospheric sludge and crust, so I'm not going to even bother to try. Just go here, read up on their radness, dl their album and demo, etc.

No, no, I promise, this post isn't just a plug for Hasan's great blog (though you should totally subscribe to it regardless), as I do have something somewhat special for you guys.

Last week, after learning of the untimely death of one-time Wake Up On Fire/Oak drummer Kevin Hannigan (R.I.P., my best wishes are with his friends and family), a friend of mine shared with me a live recording of the band playing a show at the Baltimore DIY Punk club "The Brewhenge" in 2004. It contains two songs that were never officially recorded, as well as live versions of three tracks fans of the band should be familiar with.

I've not seen this anywhere else, I hope some of you enjoy it.

Mediafire

Skaven / Stormcrow - Skaven / Stormcrow

Skaven's latest and last release, containing the one unreleased track. It's not the band most aggressive or their best, but certainly is the bands heaviest with the downtuned doom metal guitars playing a major role. Stormcrow are members of the new school, having formed in 2003. But don't let that fool you; some of their members have done time in Destroy! Since Stormcrow are literally the only legit crust band to emerge from Oakland since Skaven's demise, it's plainly obvious that no other band could be more appropriate to take up the second half of this record. Likewise, they have but one song on their side, but they make sure it's a good one. "Final Plague" is probably their best outing yet.

Hearing both of these bands back-to-back really showed me just how much crust has changed in the time that's elapsed between them. Skaven appears to be of the train of thought where crust bands intend to strip down most of the excesses of '80s metal and keep what makes it good. And it still sounds like a punk band playing their version of metal, at least to me. Stormcrow often crosses those lines in a musical sense, and since a lot of newer bands have caught on to this "even less is more" approach and practice it to some degree themselves, where does that leave Stormcrow and more recent bands of their ilk? Or, what does that make them? That's more of an observation than an actual criticism because, metal or not, Stormcrow brings the brutality. An excellent record that tells a good story in the grooves, which will undoubtedly go down as a necessary piece of the Oakland punk puzzle.

Oh Fuck

Dystopia / Skaven - Blessed are The Worms.....For They Shall Inherit This Barren Dirt!

Oh, where should I start? I am lost in complete amazement. Dystopia is a band we have heard of but how Skaven slipped under the radar I have no idea.

This split between these crust masters is simply amazing, and when you have a band, which is named Dystopia being out performed you know tat you have something very very special and very very rare in your hands.

The Dystopia side is chaos riddled, aggressive, filled with hate as usual (boy did their childhood suck).

The Skaven side with the obnoxious, in your face crust attitude, riff cannons, judgmental vocals, amazing build ups into brutal assaults and amazing atmosphere with tinges of death metal makes for an astonishingly brutal slice of crusty metallic doom.

This unfeasibly heavy split EP brings together two of the more misanthropically destructive bands in recent memory. If heavy means anything what so ever to you, then do not miss this under any circumstances.

Feel the fucking hatred

Bloody Panda - Bloody Panda

A sludge band that doesn't intend to spread hate with its aggression or crush the listener with it's riffs but instead intends to create an atmosphere that reeks of insanity, desolation and melancholy may not interest the hardcore sludge listener.

Bloody Panda don't seem to be a band that chooses to walk on different paths of their musical career but gather whatever they can along their straight path, for the music on this EP, their first release and the latest LP, Summon doesn't seem to have changed much excepting a few tweaks here and there.

Slow music with the use of female vocals that are rather operatic and darkwave influenced seem to be the order for the day with a tinge of spoken vocals here and tad of screamed vocals there,

This type of music, for me at least deserves to be listened only once or maybe more depending on your mood. Nothing much to be said about the song writing except the fact that the music goes through on year, leaves the other leaving no impression on what lies between them.


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Bloody Panda - Summon

Nothing much has changed for the band since the first release. The vocals shine amongst the backdrop of music which leaves near no impact on the listener. The band , has gotten a bit more experimental with use of droney key boards and the inclusion of post rock moments.

Often quite slow, as we’d probably expect, the American band portrays the emotive side of the songs through a combined effort between the vocals and guitars, surging forward with some mighty riffs along the way, though nothing truly memorable, The drums aren’t that affective. They seem to only be present to layer and thicken the bass sound. Varying speeds distract the listeners attention from the positives and Bloody Panda do not seem to be able to interject small doses of experimentation like bands such as Disembowelment without too much fuss. From slow to double bass fast beats, it's hard to keep up with what Bloody Panda are attempting to achieve with this odd style of music. It's melancholic atmosphere is present throughout and is one of the better aspects of this release.


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Bloody Panda - Pheromone

On hearing this one would feel that this is more doom than sludge, but give it some concentration and you'll find the sludge variations buried deep into the fuzzed out distortion. In terms of being a hybrid band, Bloody Panda are interesting, certainly, though not the best. Alongside bands like Salome, Bloody Panda have opted to include the female vocals to make matters slightly more interesting against a backdrop of simplistic instrumentation, though the atmospheres are complex in mood structures.

The vocals are pretty much the highlight of this band, Yoshiko Ohara being the temptress. Her vocals soar above the rather dull portrayal of desolation and despair and are the spark in this rather level headed release.

Hit It

Sea Of Thousand - The Church Of Total Collapse

Everything is bigger in Texas they say. The talent sure is. This sludge \ doom band that is now inactive released this and one demo before calling it quits.

After a laughable first track with ridiculous vocals, the band tightens the screw throughout the entire alum. Mainly inspired by old school sludge, the band attempts to recreate the same filthy sludge and manages to. Their fusion of old school with new school interested me, with some moments like on the track, "Marching On Its Stomach" containing elements that are a definite thowback to modern post rock found in Cult Of Luna's brand of music.Tons of variations, some times too many are the way for this band. One thing however is confirmed by this band's penchant of experimentation is that the listener never gets bored. The vocals are varied from growls to screams to spoken words and so are the song structured with tracks teethering from 90 seconds long to almost the six minute mark.

This band had tons of talent, but were too young to control and channel it in the right path, something they probably would have achieved if they had decided to stay togethor because amidst all that experimentation they would sooner or later find 'their thing'.


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Laudanum - The Apotheker

Sick of all the sludge that sounds the same ? This however is some innovative stuff. The songs on this release throw in tons of variation, whether it be a cleverly arpeggiated verse or guitar line, peculiar samples gently woven into the songsgiving them an eerie appeal , intense solos that last long enough to be appreciated, or the overall morbid and very surreal sound they provide the listener with. This album is more of an experience to listen to. There's even suggestions of stoner rock, hardcore, and experimental noise influences in the mix. A very hypnotic and engrossing release that rapidly changes from chunk, raw, and slow, to powerful, aggressive, and in your face at the drop of a hat and without missing a mark. All of that, packed into really great production.

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Laudanum - Coronation

The latest release from Oakland-based Laudanum is a fragmented collection of ambient doom-ish noise that only adequately reveals the band’s self-proclaimed “blackened instrument damage” when it’s listened to as a whole. Some moments, such as much of lengthy album closer “Apotheosis,” bring to mind the kinds of dissonant and industrial noises. Framing the disc as the score to an apocalyptic film is a good way to approach it, as expecting conventional structures (even by heavy music standards) will only lead to disappointment. There are a few moments on the album that move closer to more familiar metal shores, such as with the sporadic appearance of the harsh black/doom-style vocals. Even when expecting a less conventional approach to things, however, the album doesn’t always deliver the necessary goods to keep it interesting. It’s not that it’s boring, it's just not my thing maybe, — the whole is just more important than the individual parts. Most sludge band attempt to crush their listeners with their heavy riffs and violent drumming, while this band with its ambient sections attempts to take the listener to the point of despair and leave them there, trembling.

With this all in mind, The Coronation demands a full listen (probably multiple listens) in order to appreciate its larger project and to overlook its less fantastic moments.


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Desolate Void - Self Medicated Psycho Therapy

Thrashy a la crusty doom / sludge.

If the fuzzed out guitar tone and general Southern metal on PCP approach is the heart of Desolate Void, the soul is Andy Howard’s vocals which can only be termed as demented as he ranges from unintelligible shrieks, spoken words, deep bellows and everything in between. He makes Phil Anselmo sound like Richard Burton as he covers topics like drugs, society, drugs and overall discontent and hate with everything and everyone.

The album is basically an organized assault on the ears of the listener that bleeds a tinge of randomness all the time. Calculated yet miscalculated drum attacks, certain yer unceratin layer of riffs hit the listener like shards on a battlefield.

When it's all said and done, you find yourself hooked onto this band, ready to press play again.


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