TEN – HORSE LATITUDES Primal Gnosis
Primal Gnosis starts with quite an ambient touch, as the drums and vocals appear through the dark depths of Horse Latitudes. Their placement in the stereo field, far away from the listener, gives that obscure tone, which in turn awakens a ritualistic sense. This is also where Horse Latitudes focus a big part of their energy, creating withย slow progression a ceremonial procedure, awakened through the deep vocals, almost verging onย throat-singing at times. Nice touches, as with the addition of synthsย in โSpiralsโ and the clean guitar in โNew Dawn,โ add a more grand and interesting aspect to their vision, while this horrific dive carries on.
Drone/Doom goes hand in hand with the ritualistic aspect of Horse Latitudes, and throughout Primal Gnosis that is what the band produces. Heavy riffs comeย down, and the further you dwell into the album, the further Horse Latitudes also take you down theย rabbit hole. The progression of the whole album works towards this goal, something you will realize for yourself when you reach the lower depths of this hell in โBeast of Waste and Desolationโ with the music achieving almost a complete standstill, before restoring its slow groove.
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Label:ย Ritual Productions
NINE – DOMKRAFT THE End of Electricity
Sometimes you just need to escape from reality, to let the THCย infiltrate your brain and drift off on a cloud of hypnotic riffageโฆtoday is one of those days! Thanks be to Magnetic Eye for providing me with the trip I need in the form of Stockholmโs wizards of heavy DOMKRAFTโs new album,ย The End of Electricity. If you like your doom on theย heavy andย groovy side, this band will blow you away. I can just tell these guys would ruin my hearing live, which is always a good sign.
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EIGHT – BLACK TOMB s/t
Now this might be the coolest part of my job: turning rabid music fiends on to new music! The other night,ย being the stoner troll I am, I stumbled across this killer new DOOM band called BLACK TOMB! Imagine if you crossed Graves at Sea with Electric Wizard and Cough, and then gave the resulting demonic creature a huge bong load โ that might begin to describe this band’s sound. I’m so fucking impressed with their self-titled debut that I can’t stop listening to it. I know that BLACK TOMB is special and are going to be mammoth in no time, because they are just that fucking good! The awesome new labelย Graven Earth Recordsย released their tape, and a vinyl release is in the works on Totem Cat Records.
SEVEN – R.I.P. In The Wind
I am an art junkie, so all it took was one look at Adam Burke’sย cover art for R.I.P.’sย upcoming debut full length, In The Wind, to know that this was an album I was going to fucking enjoy! And once โIn The Wind Part Iโ unleashed its megaton riffs on my willing ears, I was in doom heaven, seen through the mind of one too many hits of acid. R.I.P. brings you raw, dark and filthy doom that you can whip your hair to. Itโs fast, fuzzed-out, loud and heavy and will encourage the overconsumption of whiskey and weed. They are like the raddest 70โs van come to life, with Ozzy in the driverโs seat and Lemmy onย the passenger side! Basically, these PNW hellions know how to create doom withย HUGE riffs that make you want to dance and head bang at the same time!
SIX – DISROTTED Divination
Unholy quadruple fuck, Disrotted have just taken doom to the next fucking level of craziness. How are we gonna explain this record to our children?? This insanity right here is for all the THCย blood freaks out there from fucking planet Weedian. For all the reefer and hash freaks. For those happy wretched souls who dwell in an eternal toxic haze and enjoy life being perennially absurd, warped, mystic and weird. Disrotted are a cosmic hell ride through the most remote, darkest and unknown corners of psychedelia-induced madness. This band will make your mindย travel so far, and so deep into your own unconscious that once Divination comes to its final moments, you will have no fucking idea what just happened to you as you helplessly try to pick up the pieces of your own collapsed mindโฆ
Overall, Disrottedโsย โDivinationโ is an unforgettable listening experience, specifically because this record is just so crazy and out there. I donโt think anyone had ever conceived something like this before. These guys are literally on the next level of high. Their minds are just somewhere else and when they make music itโs probably impossible for anyone with some lucidity left in them to fully understand what may be happening in their creative process. But overall, this is just superior, grade A, top notch extreme doom of the most implacable craft. Your poor little brain will not fucking survive this listen.
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FIVE – BEASTMAKER Lusus Naturae
โVibeโ is a word that is thrown around pretty regularly when talking about 70s-inspired Doom. Huge walls of amps, weed, Les Pauls, Rickenbackers, bell bottomsโฆyou know the score. Vibe isnโt tangible, itโs a vague term to define, but when itโs firing in music โ itโs undeniable. And on Beastmakerโs debut album Lusus Naturae (Freak of Nature), the vibe is most certainly there.
With a couple of demos and an EP already under their belts, Lusus Naturae is out through Rise Above Records โ which should give you an indication of what to expect. Despite hailing from Fresno, California, thereโs a distinctly British vibe (thereโs that word again) to the album. Cult horror film nods (The Mask of Satan in particular) and an aura of dread hover like spectres, while the unashamedly vintage sound allows each instrument to breathe clearly while never allowing the music to suffocate under its own weight. Cleaner moments appear frequently to heighten bleak and lonely moods before returning to the familiar rocking trudge, punctured by the occasional fuzzed-out guitar lead. Vocals in this kind of doom are cool when they sound like theyโre being delivered by a zombie โ and thatโs exactly what theyโre doing here.
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FOUR – 11PARANOIAS Reliquary For a Dreamed World
Doom/sludge plays a big part of 11Paranoiasโ sound, which is no surprise when you lookย at the resumรฉ of its members. Heavy, insanely distorted and torturously slow, they make sure that thisย comes across from the very beginning of โPeripheral Metamorphosis.โ The dirty vibe, with the saturation at a high, and the vocals buried beneath the heavy riffs allow this devastating aspect to come in full force.
As was the case with their previous works, psychedelia plays a significant part in the bandโs vision. Enhancing their heavy sound with effects and trippy moments was always a very suitable accompaniment to doom/sludge, but in Reliquaryโฆย this aspect has truly blossomed. The psychedelic overtones have taken on a style of their own, with a liquid manifestation, creating an unearthly haze in โMeditation On The Voidโ and a complete loss of consciousness in โAvallaunius.โ There is a more rock-y tone that comes through, not so much the typical psychedelic doom, but rather an alien jam session, heavily influenced by the late โ60s and early โ70s.
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THREE – HOLY SERPENT Temples
Magic, Purple Sunsets, Hash Pipes, Sticky Green Bud, Expanded Minds, Alteredย States of Reality are only some of the thoughts I have as I listen to the new cosmic LP by HOLY SERPENT entitled Temples. This band is fucking unreal and should not be slept on, because the create a very special brand of doom. What I love about their music is the transcendental energy that takes me over with each listen! It’s almost like I don’t need to get HIGH before jamming out to Temples, because every riff has already been dipped into a blendย of THCย andย Soulful Chaos.
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TWO – COUGH Still They Prey
They say time heals all wounds. In the case of Richmond quartet Cough, time appears to have become the catalyst that feeds their demons and fuels their fire. Their experiences over the past decade have helped shape the bandโs sound into the unequivocally monstrous, down-tuned behemoth that has finally returned with Still They Pray to unleash another lesson in torment upon the world.
Whether co/vocalist and four-stringer Parker Chandlerโs involvement with doom gurus Windhand was a contributing factor to Coughโs six year gap between albums remains to be seen, but either way, the latterโs return will undoubtedly be celebrated throughout the extreme metal universe. The first half of the album cements this thought with iron-clad finality, with opener โHaunter of the Darkโ lucid in its crawling chaos and stark in its Lovecraftian form. โPossessionโ and the doleful wanderings of โMasters of Tortureโ see Chandlerโs & Ciscoโs vocals range from mournful and melodic to shrieks that convey utter savagery, with a bloodcurdling snarl that would leave Eyehategod grinning manically in the wake of the accursed chanting of, โlive to hate; hate to live.โ
Utterly intoxicating in all its punishing, psychedelic splendour, Still They Pray is a glorious homecoming for Cough, who remain masters of their art as well as one of the preeminent bands to seamlessly meld doom and sludge to both devastating and mesmerising effect. These riffs have grown immeasurably in their slumber, and now finally released, they push the band to the absolute top of their game.
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ONE – GRAVES AT SEA The Curse That Is
Graves At Seaโs brand of dismal, bass-rich doom/sludge is played in such perfect concert, that when an instrument breaks away from the collective pummel, itโs a total thrill. The bass, guitars and drums here wind, groove, hammer,and plod together in perfect reciprocity, no one element any more vital or pronounced than the other. Frontman Nathan Misterekโs vocals are commanding throughout, alternating between throat-scraping rasp and gruffer bellows. Extra props to the spirited frontman for enunciating theย lyrics. The fuck-it-all mantras wonโt be lost on anyone here.
Graves At Sea return to us in 2016 with a record that seems to advocate for bringing doom/sludge back to the basics, but finds the right spaces to color new shadesย in.ย Having remainedย loyal to their roots, Graves At Sea emergeย all these yearsย later with catchier riffs, smartly structured songs, heavy hitting moments at nearlyย every juncture, and a biker-crank mysticism that behooves the sheer force of their mighty sludge.
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