Named after a faction from the popular Elder Scrolls video game series which I’m not very familiar with, English doom overloads Morag Tong follow-up their EP debut Through Clouded Time by dropping a lysergic, wandering slab of doom with hazy tones, psychedelic melody and a plummeting sludgy aggression seeping into their unholy pounding.  Faint whiffs […]

  It seems like every year there is a handful of massive funeral doom albums that are so meticulous that they take numerous listens to analyze.  Funeral doom in and of itself can vary depending on artist and approach to instrumentation.  This writer was caught a bit off guard in discovering Mournful Congregation’s fifth full […]

As LBGQT rights remain in the forefront of today’s political climate, so it creeps furthermore into extreme music. Mina Caputo of Life of Agony and Kat Shevil (Winds of Genocide) have been out front of the movement in metal for a while now, but it appears to be picking up. Just this month I received […]

As usual. when the dust has settled on a year, a few late year releases find their way into my hands and miss  the deadline for year end lists, but certainly need some attention, and this is the case  with the second album from the UKs Monolith Cult, a new act to me. In my […]

Although metal keeps splintering and evolving as we push on through the 2010s, a lot of bands keep reaching back to the early 70s for their sound and inspiration. (Do the math – that’s 40 years ago already!) All those decades later, and those groovy bonghit riffs and bone-scattered altars are as influential as they […]

The debut album by Norway’s Omit is a monstrous work: five symphonic doom metal songs stretched across two discs, with song lengths between fourteen and twenty six minutes. Fortunate for me, I love long songs (hell, my favourite song of all time is “Close to the Edge” by Yes.) Omit perform a highly orchestrated, beautiful […]

For the last entry in my 2011 Shiver Records catch-up run we have the debut release of Belgium’s Marche Funèbre, a swampy ooze of melancholy death-doom. One thing I need to just get out of the way is that I simply despise the clean singing on this disc. It’s a warbly, pseudo-operatic, sadghost voice that […]

After a few relatively quiet months,  Dark Descent Records has unleashed an unholy duo of crumbling doom/death metal in the form of Emptiness‘s experimentally depressive Loss and Anhedonist‘s crawling, lumbering debut, Netherwards. However, when truly unearthing Netherwards one word comes to mind more than any other; Cavernous. Playing a form of subterranean doom/death metal Seattle’ […]

There’s a very fine line as a critic between liking something and disliking something. A production issue, a vocal issue, a song writing issue or any number of things that can sway an opinion between praise and disappointment. Case and point; 40 Watt Sun’s largely revered album, The Inside Room and Pallbearer‘s debut album. Both cathartic, […]

So being a huge fan of Gorefest I had to check out the second album from The 11th Hour, a doom metal project featuring former Gorefest (and current Hail of Bullets) drummer Ed Warby and guitarist Frank Harthoon. That respectable duo is joined by Officium Triste growler Pim Blankenstein,  who brings his super deep, typical […]

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 […]

Metal fans listen to their favorite genre for many different emotional responses. Some of us seek an exhilarating high from its more epic and powerful expressions. Others find an outlet for frustration and aggression from its visceral, blackened and bludgeoning strains. And some enjoy the intellectual immersion and awe that comes from its most ambitious […]

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 […]

Anyone has a Latin dictionary? Here is the impressive debut from Minnesota’s Atrum Inritus and as you can tell from the moniker, album title and track titles like “Aegrus Evert”, ” Sacramentum Exeuntium”, ” Tenebris Descendi” and “Ephemera”, there’s no doubt about what we are  dealing with here: Black metal. While all the above and […]

Listen, I’ll readily admit to being one of those shallow, close minded types that judges a book by its cover, or a band by its moniker. And quite frankly a band with the name The Gardenerz wasn’t something I was ready to dive into. It’s the same reason I’ve never listened to Weekend Nachos 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 […]

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 […]

In their four album transition from typical Finnish doom death outfit to a melancholic melodic (melocholic?) death metal, Insomnium have done no wrong. Each album being better than the last. And album number 5 is no different as the band manages to take slivers of recognizable influences like Rapture, Amorphis, In Flames, Paradise Lost, My […]

I heard Moab’s Dimensioner demo earlier this year and walked away unimpressed. It was decent enough spacey stoner doom, just nothing too exceptional or interesting. Round 2 is here with the release of their first full length, Ab Ovo, and the band fares much better with some very solid stoner doom that, unfortunately, features some […]

From the band’s 2004 The Miseries Never Cease EP to their self-titled, self released 2007 debut album, I’ve long championed The Living Fields as one of the most criminally unsigned bands in metal. Well, the unsigned part was rectified with the band signing with Candlelight Records, and though this album took its sweet sweet time […]

Somewhere in Boston , MA at the intersection of doom, post rock, sludge and fucking awesome lies the band Morne. A new act to me, but after seeing some positive press and the band being on Profound Lore, I just had to check their second album out. I was greatly rewarded, as will you upon […]

When it was revealed The Gates of Slumber’s fifth album would be a return to the old school doom vibe of their debut, and that former Sourvein drummer ‘Cool’ Clyde Paradis was on board, I had a good feeling. I got into them in a backward fashion, hearing their last album first and their first […]

What a perfect name for a doom/death album. Slovakia’s Thalarion have been one of the bands I’ve always liked as they have perfected the “beauty and the beast” sound, mixing guttural death metal, atmospheric doom elements, and a hint of goth for three albums now. With their fourth album Tunes Of Despondency, Thalarion appears to […]