So Profound Lore has made up for the recent Caina release with this draining slab of ultra sludge/doom from the UK’s Atavist-and folks imagine playing Iron Monkey’s Our Problem LP backwards and at half speed while having 3 tons of concrete poured on you, and you might be close to Atavist’s take on painfully crawling doom.

As with most records of this style, II: Ruined works better as one long, self loathing listen. Though it’s broken into 6 unnamed acts (plus a bonus track), the lengthy, droning, feedback drenched oozing pace makes single tracks pointless, as by the halfway point of the 15-minute “II”, you’ll be sucked into a sonic quicksand of grimy atonal riffs, painful screams and muddy percussion that will simply drain you will to move. Then the 17 minute “III” will simply bury you alive with mouthfuls of dirt and muck with its lethargic opening bass lines and foreboding, slow motion cascade of grime.

This is gnarly, gritty stuff made for patient fans of sloth like heaviness and oppressively dense doom sludge. Even the acoustic tinkering (performed by Iron Monkey’s Jason Greaves) during the more atmospheric based reprieve of “IV”, but the surprising, more stoner-ish groove of (the also 17+ minute) “V” destroys the previous tones with a tidal wave of thunderous frivolity about 5 minutes in. Aside from the aforementioned “IV” and the start of the other wise vocally painful “VI”, II: Ruined is an ugly beast of a record made for masochistic sludge/doom fans who want to painfully and slowly, sonically self flagellate themselves into a bleeding skinless mess.

Fans of Khanate, Grief (there’s even a cover of Grief’s “I Hate the Human Race” on the US release), Negative Reaction, Corrupted, Monarch! and such should pick this up immediately and hole up in the basement for 70 minutes to wallow in filth and feedback.

[Visit the band's website]

---

Comments