“The journey begins by following a dark silhouette, each installment describes surreal and dreamlike landscapes, strange characters, and objects—with monolithic importance attached in the strange way that dreams do. In the latter tracks, ever-vigilant eyes watch from the stars and assume a more horrific face as they emerge from the darkness as the cruel pelagic and empyrean deities and monsters among Lovecraft’s multitudes. Hecatoncheir’s uniquely dreamlike take on chthonic horror, balanced by its ambitions in liminal spaces, set one hell of a precedent for the music contained herein.” Fear and loathing in Slovakia.
Sludge Metal
Blazar – Fatal Cosmic Wound Review
“People call funeral doom boring, and I get it. It’s very slow, often very long, not particularly technical, and contains few riffs per minute. Its compositions are not ordinarily gym-friendly, or headbangable. But good funeral doom is good. Crushing, transportive, and at times incredibly beautiful, as the low, slow and leaden is partnered with rising, floaty, ethereal melodies. Think Shape of Despair, Clouds, Esoteric. All this to say, that the best funeral doom is that which balances its punishing heaviness and crawling tempos with clean, graceful melodiousness in order to produce something truly immense. Blazar, Spanish funeral doom/sludge gang have a different philosophy.” Angry burial.
Sun of Nothing – Maze Review
“Few albums reveled in existential despair like Sun of Nothing’s The Guilt of Feeling Alive. While punishing in ways that recall Neurosis or Blindead, it settled heavily into tension and despondence beneath the devastation. It always hinted at something without fully grasping it, fluid and powerful heft contrasting with an overwhelming bleakness. Despite its black metal influence, Sun of Nothing did not offer a bleakness like DSBM’s passing glance at a winter landscape, but represented the grey of its troubling cover art: the day-in and day-out of a cold, tired, and worn city, shrouded in smog. For its first album in fourteen years, the Greek quartet has offered something that stands shoulder to shoulder.” Maze of tormets.
Baratro – The Sweet Smell of Unrest Review
“Baratro is a side project of Dave Curran of Unsane. If that shouldn’t clue you in on the level of sonic abuse that awaits you on The Sweet Smell of Unrest, then get outta my face. Noise rock is already a caustic breed of music, a nasty chocolate coating, but when you fuse it with the megaton weight of sludge, the heavy peanut butter, you’ve got yourself a sonic peanut butter cup of bludgeoning pain.” Two great pains that hurt even more together.
Morne – Engraved with Pain Review
“Those familiar with the band’s previous work will find it mostly unchanged here. Morne sit at the intersection of post-metal and doom with the residue of crust and sludge corroding any exposed surfaces. Structurally, they like to write a big, driving riff with methodical drums pounding away and then just camp on that for a while. Then they build a house there and put down roots.” Morne hasn’t broken.
Phantom Winter – Her Cold Materials Review
“Seldom does artwork perfectly embody a band’s sound, but Phantom Winter’s four-album streak of black-and-white portrayals of the horrific and fantastical is dead-on. While lightless and unceasingly dreary, there is a stillness that silences the cacophony. Like a barren forest in the last sigh of winter, Her Cold Materials is a scream receiving no echo, the soft “thump” of a body in the snow, the mockery of the woods’ constant and uninterested witness. In the bleak model of consistency, Phantom Winter once again proves the grit of its mettle in a frostbitten silence that proves less is more.” Winter is coming (soon).
Bolt Gun – The Tower Revew
“The Tower feels like ascent. You’ll feel light as air, floating upon the ether in warm sunlight, only to crash to earth in plummeting gravity. While journeys are not uncommon across metal’s many weathered and storied expanses, Australia’s Bolt Gun offers a vertical trek. Its experimental fervor, blackened climaxes, and monolithic weight, and above all, the emphasis on atmosphere, offer scenic vistas and groveling earth alike, hurtling towards the summit and the zenith. Always majestic, as if in reverence to the colossal structure always in view, The Tower feels like a chronicle: a breathing, organic, but dense legend.” Climbing creativity.
Rorcal – Silence Review
“Rorcal’s approach to auditory darkness is nonetheless unmistakable, post-hardcore and post-metal coursing through every vein. Dissonant and ominous, tar-thick slogs of drone/sludge contrast mightily with raw wounds of blackened shreds with impeccable balance.” Silent but deadly.
Besra – Transitions Review
“Tension and release. This relationship is a core tenet of musical composition (and most other art forms for that matter), and in the wide world of metal few genres rely on it as heavily as those with “post” attached to them. The swell and crash that is so endemic to the style requires precise attention to detail to succeed. One can dwell too long in the simmering buildup and risk losing the listener’s attention, or approach the climax too quickly and cheapen the crushing effect of the arrival. The middle road reveals a maxim of post-metal; simple form yielding complex expression. Finland’s Besra aim to thread this needle with their second full-length, Transitions.” Sound and fury signifying….
Domkraft – Sonic Moons Review
“The departed Huck N’ Roll, who has not been reduced to a nutritious paste designed to keeps n00bs clinging to life, loved up on Domkraft’s 2021 release Seeds. Huck considered the third album by these Swedes to be the best stoner/psych doom album of that year. The readership shared his enthusiasm to a point, while also noting that the effort felt like psychedelia as played by those who eschew psychedelics. I agreed with both camps; Seeds is a fun listen, but it does occasionally seem like the work of three talented members of the school orchestra who drank some punch spiked with liquid acid at the prom.” You put the seeds in the bongonut.