“Massachusetts quartet Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean (who, I assume, take their name from the 2007 song “Fucking Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean” by Louisiana sludge legends, Thou) have made a bit of a name for themselves on the sludge scene, despite having only one (short) LP to their name, 2017’s Decay and Other Hopes Against Progress.” Chained by an anchor?
“Look, let’s cut to the chase here, Monuments of Grief is, unsurprisingly, bleak as all fuck. With an album title like that, released under the nom de guerre The Sombre and as the followup to Shapeless Misery, there is no levity, no joy and no whimsy to be found here. Monuments of Grief is just that, a towering obelisk of doom that drags the listener down into a hopeless pit of despair, from whence one can look up at the light but with absolutely no hope of reaching it.” Sweet grief.
The lists continue as GardensTale and Ferrous Beuller regale us with their Top Ten(ish) picks for the year. Pay attention.
Master of Muppets and TheKenWord with their very own Top Ten(ish) of 2019 lists? There goes the neighborhood!
Once they were n00bs, but now they get their own Top Ten(ish) of 2019 lists. They grow up so fast!.
“An indifferent moon silently presides over an ocean bejeweled with the shimmering ghosts of stars, witness to all and concerned with none. The air is alive with salt and sea breeze, the water as clear and cold as the uncompromising truth that is mortality. You, of course, are aware of precisely none of these things, nor of anything else aside from your own clear, cold reality: You’re fucking drowning, yo. Waxen, hypoxic skin and waterlogged lungs are all that you are here, a stifled testimony of abject self defeat and an inconsequential offering to no one; defeated, drowning… dead. This is what the darkest shades of depression feel like, a perpetually cold and helpless state of being on the wrong side of a near death moment as the world around you spins on, unaffected and insouciant. VI – Dantalion is the soundtrack to such a self-sustained drowning.” Deep waters.
