“Echoes is the quartet’s third full-length since the act’s conception in 2010. While featuring the armaments and cavernous bellows of Incantation or Winter, it also is armed with a stoner doom fuzz and vocal influence from Candlemass. However, you can be sure that the “married iguana” haze does not subtract from Altar of Betelgeuze’s intention of crushing your skull in.” Betelgeuze!
“Acausal Intrusion verged on greatness with 2021’s Nulitas, touching the lip of the void but never quite accomplishing the swan dive into the darkness. Uncompromisingly complex, dissonant, and brutal through Nythroth’s unhinged axework, alongside more brutal elements like vocalist Cave Ritual’s subterranean growls and his tasteful pong snare, it was an album loaded with potential – uniquely accomplished through a strangely counterintuitive meditative quality.” Pardon this new Intrusion.
“I became acquainted with Dead Void through their quiet yet mammoth 2018 demo The Looming Spectre. I was neck deep in the melodic style of death/doom, my only experience with more ominous mutterings consisting of Thergothon or Swallowing, so these Danes’ breed of absolutely devastating death/doom hit me like a ton of slimy bricks. As dead and dripping as the walls of R’lyeh, with a megaton weight that more closely recalled funeral doom, it cranked my excitement meter to a solid 11. When Volatile Forms appeared in the promo dump, I hungrily gobbled it up.” Void if forms removed.
“Although divisive, Portal’s influence in the death metal world is undeniable. Featuring riffs that seem to crawl with murk and dissonance aplenty with an eldritch monstrosity roaring from the pulpit, there are few who can accurately channel this particular breed of otherworldly alienation. Many have tried and failed, but getting that squirming aesthetic just right is nearly impossible. Basque duo Pestilength is the latest to try their hand at the next Vexovoid.” Cake? No cake!
“Not being an especially spiritual bloke, I only took a flyer on Mass Worship’s sophomore platter Portal Tombs because they were tagged “death metal” in our greasy promo sump. Well, the promo sump sits on a greasy throne of greasy lies! These Swedish sadists are NOT death metal, and it’s actually a challenge to explain what they are. I can tell you Portal Tombs is a ridiculously heavy slab of extreme metal designed to smother and obliterate all light and joy from this cursed world. Their style rumbles through death, black, sludge, doom and grind genres like a nuclear-powered killdozer, and the band is more than happy to beat you with any and all tools they come across during their bloody rampage.” Portals and tombs but no cake at all.
“When thinking of how to describe Soothsayer’s primitive sound, I thought if the band were a people, they’d be advanced enough to build a pretty mean henge, but they’d definitely still be eating their enemies to steal their battle ability, and if a farmer brought their shaman a vegetable that grew weird, they’d probably worship it.” Protoculture.
“Pushed face down into the muck and scum, suffocating in fetid waste as an invincible force presses inexorably down upon you, knowing you can’t fight it nor escape. This is the lovely sensation Bloodsoaked Necrovoid strive to deliver with their uber murky sub-basement level take on raw doom death.” Unfathomable pooination.
“We’ve discussed revivals before, and tributes aplenty. Just look at Sweven’s Morbus Chron tribute–kind of a bit of both, and to mixed reactions. The list goes on: Black Sabbath and Heaven and Hell; Immortal and Abbath. Musicians looking to revive an old project under a new name must tread lightly, as we don’t want Morbus Chron 2.0, for example, but something that acknowledges the past while taking a fresh step forward. Today’s topic of discussion, New York’s Winter, a relatively quiet 90’s death metal act that nevertheless influenced the development of the death/doom niche with its murky and sprawling tunes.” Winter is coming back.
“Celtic Frost’s music was simple yet influential. But there’s a problem with simple yet influential music: it’s easy to play, and thus you’re going to have a lot of bad bands try to play it. Still, for the longest time I couldn’t really think of a particularly awful group that sounded like early Celtic Frost. Well, you know what they say: if you spend long enough poking around, you never know what you’ll dig up. Here, amidst the remains of half-baked riffs and ideas long ago discarded by young groups who knew they could do better, I’ve uncovered a true stinker of an album, a record that I question how it ever came into being: High Command, the debut full-length by Pennsylvania’s Cultic.” Celtic Lost.
“I don’t know what it is with the water in Portland, Oregon lately that’s causing this recent influx of heady, destructive doom/death metal. With Bell Witch dropping an almost-90-minute megaton bomb in Mirror Reaper last year, Portland is starting to become the city where all things slow and guttural go to blossom into incredible, epic-length cascades of the downtrodden. Throwing their hats into that collective summoning circle is upstarts Shrine of the Serpent.” Dirges over Portlandia.
