Rejoice! All ye who’ve hoped and prayed over the past several years for a return of the SnailKing, the second half of Ufomammut’s two part Oro has arrived. Rather than continue on in vein of Opus Primum’s spacious doom, the Italian trio has returned to their gritty sludge roots on Opus Alter with faster and […]

Are you in need of a crushing sludge fix? Something obliteratingly heavy, perhaps with a touch of droning doom psychedelics? Eh? Black Shape of Nexus has your number. Continuing in the heavier direction apparent on their split with Kodiak, Negative Black is a big shift for this German crew. Microbarome Meetings, the bands previous album […]

Sabbath Assembly’s debut Restored to One came out of nowhere to become one of my favorite releases of 2010. The music, a fusion of 60’s psych-pop and gospel, was based on theology and hymns of an apocalyptic psychotherapy cult from the 60’s known as the Process Church of the Final Judgment. The founders of the […]

Dorset’s Ramesses have quickly followed up Take the Curse with Possessed by the Rise of Magik. Though in the same musical horror show their previous albums occupied, they’ve returned with a nightmarishly frayed and fucked blackened production that is irritatingly hollow. It’s hard to be too negative though because I kept coming back even when […]

What do the verbs “drink”, “fight” and “fuck” have in common? XII Boar (Say it with me: “Twelve Boar”). Judging from sound of their new EP, that’s probably all they do. I’m talking rocking, galloping, swaggering metal that tumbles along like a coked out Dukes of Nothing crashing headlong into Beaten Back to Pure. This […]

Whores’ debut EP Ruiner can be summarized with two words: “Fuckin’ riffs”. In fact, that would probably be my review if submitting it wouldn’t make me feel terribly lazy, as well as piss off my Teeth of the Divine overlords. Monstrous, grimy riffs. Riffs that eat bricks and shit lead. Riffs so big, so heavy, […]

16 are back with the follow-up to their excellent reunion album Bridges to Burn. It’s a decent successor, if a little disappointing. Good enough on its own, Deep Cuts From Dark Clouds isn’t as memorable as their last outing and doesn’t measure up to the band’s earlier work. It’s more aggressive, more direct in its […]

Ufomammut has been one of the most consistent doom bands of the past decade. The band released five albums from 2000 to 2010, not including the brilliant collaboration with Lento, and there’s not a mediocre album in the bunch. They’ve cultivated a unique sound that layers ebbing tides of lashing doom riffs with synths and […]

Decent, if derivative, Dead Southern Bishop’s new self-released EP doesn’t make much of an impression. Their sound is firmly rooted in the southern sludge scene of the late 90’s and early 00’s and is similar to period bands Mugwart and Leechmilk. Being unoriginal isn’t necessarily an issue (i.e. Witchcraft, Orchid or, per this genre, Moloch), […]

Newcastle’s prolific drone-doom team is back with another mesmerizing dose of psychedelic drone. Mana Yood Sushai marks something of a milestone for the band, since it is their first release recorded in a proper studio. Last years Beyond Ancient Space was a crushing piece of lo-fi droning doom, dense with foreboding atmosphere. Despite the music […]

Summer driving season is almost here and White Orange should be at the top of the playlist for all fans of straightforward, acid-fried rock and roll. Their debut is simple, straightforward stoner rock that pays homage to the influence of Kyuss and Monster Magnet, balanced by the catchy pop influence that Queens of the Stone […]

Pardon me while I pick my face off of the floor, Cop Problem just sheared my grill off with this rager of an EP. Intense d-beat and crust influenced hardcore that slays and slays for every second of its nine minutes. This is an urgent, ripping blast of catharsis straight from the streets of Killadelphia […]

One thing I’ve always enjoyed about stoner bands are the unapologetically straightforward band names. Bongzilla, King Bong, Space Bong, Belzebong, Dopefight, Dopethrone, Weedeater… Frankly, I’m surprised no one thought to use just plain old Bong before these guys started up in 2005. It’s easy to think sing this kind of name is too obvious, or […]

What the fuck is going on in the midwest? I guess all those cold winter days spent inside listening to Darkthrone and drinking cough syrup have paid off because between Coffinworm, Wolvhammer and the new Lord Mantis they pretty much have the whole blackened sludge thing nailed down tighter than a really good metaphor for […]

Tort is yet another success from Spain’s blossoming doom scene. Spawned from the same fetid breeding ground that produced Eight Hands for Kali, Graveyard, and Warchetype, and featuring ex-members of Lords of Bukkake and Cuerno, Tort was formed out of a desire to play something other than “sad and slow doom”. Their debut for Totalrust […]

COC caused a bit of a stir when they announced they would be moving forward without longtime guitarist and singer Pepper Keenan. This was cause for concern for a lot of fans weaned on the heavy southern groove the band plied from Deliverance to In the Arms of God. A Pepper-less COC was unimaginable, unconscionable. […]

France’s Comity constructs lengthy songs from short, violent outbursts of tightly wound riffs. It’s spastic, ragingly violent hardcore with a heavy dose of noise rock and a touch of post rock shimmer. It’s nothing that hasn’t been done many times before, but the restraint they show in the second half of The Journey is Now […]

Blacks Skies’ stock-in-trade is a blend of early Pentagram-style proto-doom and stoner rock. Their vibe and sound is more rough and tumble rock n’ roll than crushingly heavy. Driving riffs are the theme here, not obliterating heaviness, and the band rumbles forth convincingly, if unexceptionally, on their third full length release. The intro and main […]

40 Watt Sun is the new band from Warning’s Patrick Walker and if you’re familiar with Warning and Walker’s signature vocal style, you’ve some idea of what to expect. The Inside Room is dour, pallid, melancholic doom for the most part. Though similar to Warning in many respects, 40 Watt Sun is more drone and […]

The Ruins at Dusk is wholesale riff worship. Archon main man Andrew Jude and his cadre of guests construct towering monoliths, layering slow rolling riffs upon waves of ritualistic drums. The four tracks, spanning nearly 60 minutes, expand on traditionally slow moving sludge/doom with some classic rock wah abuse and psychedelia to produce some truly […]

Another day, another sludge band returning from an extended absence. Rue is back from the depths for their sophomore release, Thorns, a schizophrenic slab of sonic catharsis. Pummeling sludge grooves are coated with a layer of Rust Belt decay and filtered through Midwest hardcore and old fashioned rock and roll. It’s a solid blend that […]

The 7” EP was both a blessing and a curse in the 90’s. They were cheap to produce and sell, which meant small labels could produce them easily and that you could walk away from a show with new music even if you only had 2 or 3 bucks to spare. Of course, the rub […]

This takes me back to the good ol’ days in the 90s when Relapse Records was also Release Entertainment and put out albums by cold industrialists like Dead World and Malformed Earthborn. Harsh, bludgeoning and mechanistic, Eyeswithoutaface’s Monotoneoteny is a raging piece of industrial sludge. It’s heavy and it’s abrasive, even as it is quiet […]

Wino is back. After Shrinebuilder, Wino teamed up with longtime friend and guitarist Jim Karow, drummer Matthew Clark and former Meatjack bassist Brian Daniloski to bring the stoned heavy in a new band, Premonition 13. Now, if the name Wino means anything to you, you can go ahead and skip the review because this is […]

Reviewers tend to get caught up in clever descriptions, mostly because it’s sometimes hard to describe exceedingly typical things. You can’t say, for example, “It sounds like average goregrind” for every average goregrind album you review. That would either be incredibly lazy or the most honest thing a reviewer has ever done, I’m not quite […]