doom metal

The recent (edit: a year and a half ago! Fuuuuuck) Bongripper and Conan UK tour lived up to all my expectations in total sonic annihilation, and this tie-in Split 12″ is a great little reminder of the cacophony the duo made together. On the 12″ we get more of the same from Bongripper, which isn’t a bad thing I assure you. I simply cannot think of anything more to say other than it really is awesome as…

Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself of the growing pool of talent in my local area. Zonderhoof were another local band that I’d somehow spent my entire life avoiding; that was until Terrorizer magazine gave their album away for free with an issue of their magazine, and at their stall in Damnation Festival 2011 (which is where I kindly received my copy). Even then, I only gave it a quick listen, and I…

Seeing Justin Broadrick performing live as JK Flesh in Roadburn 2012 really opened up my eyes; it was like a dream coming true, the dirgy rhythms, haunting vocals and nasty guitar sound of Godflesh mashed head on into dubstep-style heavy bass and programmed drums. I didn’t really know whether I should dance or punch somebody in the face. To be true, I did neither; I just stood there bobbing my head as the awesomeness washed…

Oh, how I have longed for a new Jesu release! I snoozed on the previous new material (the Duchess 7″) and it sold out before I had even the slightest chance of even considering buying it, and now it is added to my never-ending list of expensive shit to buy off Discogs. Trouble is, it’s hard to find the money to keep up with all the new releases in the first place, doubly hard when…

For me, I find that Judgement is the perfect sound for Anathema. If you’ve read a few of these posts, by now you should notice that I like to find a balancing point between the sound a band starts with and then eventually works their way towards. I like to lay out albums in my mind and try and see how groups get from one stage to the other; what changes and why. Judgement, in…

Hate sound absolutely nothing like what I expected. Being totally unfamiliar with them, I should really have looked them up before buying this record, but Bongripper’s name alone carried enough weight to seal the deal for me. This split spins at 45rpm, so it is unfortunately very short, but hey – give me quality over quantity any day of the week. So like I said, Hate sound nothing like I anticipated. Splitting with Bongripper made…

Here’s an EP I’ve been meaning to check out for a long time now, but me being me, it’s taken me the best part of forever to finally stumble upon a copy. Maaaan this shit is so fucking heavy – so heavy that on my car stereo all I can hear whilst driving are the cymbals and vocals. This is something that generally happens with muddily produced grindcore records, but Pus’ epic low end just…

For me, Endtyme stands apart from anything else in the Cathedral discography. They have done dark before, sure, one needs not look further than the debut album to realise that, but that record is a whole other sack of decapitated witch heads. Here, Cathedral are chuggy and enormously groovy-heavy; and in a certain way take their groovy doom and smash it head on with the styles on display in the debut. Once I read somewhere…

Kroh are on top form here, bringing up more mega-heavy tunage with their trademark crooning vocals. This could be a B-side from the S/T recording sessions for all I know, the sound is that similar to the recordings used there. Does it matter? Nope. Great stuff! Fat production, brilliant singing and THAT guitar sound that we love so much from Fukpig. Ice Dragon I can’t get my head around, unfortunately. The sound is an absolute…

So I’ve been holding off buying this fucker for a long time, mainly because I was plagued with the dilemma of getting it on vinyl (the far superior format, of course) or on CD (song plays through in one go rather than in three parts). As collectable as the vinyl pressing of Tee Pee’s release might be, I forever shied away from it due to the fact that the hour-plus trip that is Dopesmoker would…

So if you weren’t at the London show when this 7″ came out, you were pretty much boned for an original copy! Represses exist on 7″ though thanks to Rise Above, and the EP was released more nationally as a free copy by the good folk at Terrorizer magazine, on the excellently under-rated format of tape and with a couple of extra tracks thrown in for good measure! You though vinyl had a warm sound?…

This is the first Jesu record I heard and it is still probably one of my favourite releases by him. It also introduced me to Jarboe, which opened up a whole can of worms in my life in the form of Swans (another very long story for another day), who appears here as a special guest, not to mention as a precursor to the pair’s collaboration album that would follow. Lifeline was released on the…

Om were an accidental discovery for me. I have had the mp3s of Pilgrimage for years thanks to a friend, but I had never truly appreciated them. To me it literally just seemed like SleepLite. What was the fucking point? Anyway, I’ll cut the bullshit and get straight to the point. One day I decided to try and smoke as much weed as I possibly could. I’m not talking “oh, let’s get totally baked”, I’m talking about…

What I’ve got here in today’s post is Bongripper’s 3rd pressing of Satan Worshipping Doom, which I wisely picked up at Roadburn in April. The band release all their records themselves, and it is now worth a small fortune on Discogs. Also, this is going to sound rather bizarre, but I see this as less of a record and more as a reminder, or a testament, to the band’s fucking mind-blowing set at Roadburn festival 2012. I gotta…

Imagine how stupid I felt after shelling out for the super-ultra-mega-wicked-limited edition of this record that was ONLY available at day one of Roadburn 2012 when I found out there was actually less to it than the normal Relapse package and a few quid more expensive! Bitch please! In a European world where records cost an average of 20 Euros each I was not impressed. Never mind, I guess it is the same record regardless,…

For me, Pentastar is the essential first listen album for Earth. It combines the dizzying drones from the first few records with the unusual penchant for traditional song structures that would pave the way for the band’s later, more clean and folky shoegazer efforts. This is the last Earth record to fully embrace the wonders of the fuzz, and for this reason alone it must be worshipped! What I have here is the excellent value…

It has been a long wait, but I bet a whole bunch of people are happy with Earache for finally deciding to press both Iron Monkey records onto wax for the first time ever. They are pressed from digital masters, so I wasn’t expecting the world but they actually sound absolutely fantastic. I’ve always been put off by Earache’s CD comp of all Iron Monkey shit (I’m a record-in-it’s-original-form kinda guy), so when I heard…

I never know what to make of Zeke. I picked this 7″ up purely because it was so cheap on Relapse a few years ago. I picture this band to be great live. I envision it as fast sludge. It is like rock’n’roll and hardcore punk mixed into a sludgy southern feel. There are a lot of traditional influences here, and it even sounds like something altogether more Black Label Society in parts. Hmm. Puzzling. This is…

When I Initially bought this I thought it was an LP (silly me) so expectedly I was a touch disappointed on its arrival. Never mind, because that initial disappointment faded very quickly upon first spinning Black Sun’s self-destructive noise meets sludge attack. Imagine early Swans, Iron Monkey and Burning Witch having a fight in the bottom of an mine shaft and you should have a pretty good idea of how Black Sun sound. Paralyser isn’t as noise…

This is one of my favourite 7″s! Paul Catten fronted Lazarus Blackstar is a rare beastie, but a feckin’ good ‘un. In my opinion their existence can be summed up in this cracking little EP (not that the records aren’t any good), which really acts as an an album sampler for Funeral Voyeur more than anything. Side A eclipses side B, “Make Believe Master” is enormously heavy and ridiculously catchy for something of this slow…

This is the Black Sun split 7″ with They Are Cowards that was put out by At War With False Noise in 2009 on a super limited run of 300 black copies. Not much to say here, as this is really a collectors item. Black Sun’s input is an earlier version of “Code Black” which was to later to go on to appear as the opener to their album “Twilight of the Gods”. It’s a…