This South Carolina sludge duo only had three indie EPs and a couple live-off-the-floor albums to their credit, but The Sludgelord liked them so much, they started a label just so they could sign ‘em. So that’s gotta count for something. Dismal Planet offers up seven tracks, most around the seven-minute range, on their full-length studio debut.
The album kicks off with the gritty stomp of “Bull of Minos,” with Black Cobra drum fills, heavy distorted bass and Weedeater-style vocals aplenty. They’ve got that southern groove down pat, although it’s sometimes buried in a thick layer of fuzz—with a bit of an early Zoroaster vibe here, too, that’s got me headbanging like a mofo for the last couple minutes. “Izhar” packs a similarly grimy vibe, along with a couple killer breakdowns, into its scant three-minute runtime. From there, we’re (mostly) on to epic-length songs.
“Bolted Down Boiled to Grease” is about as cheerful as its title implies, as they slow things down a bit for a gloomy, seven-minute dirge. “D.H.F.” adds some death metal kick drum to an otherwise slow and sparse sludgy number, before the title track regurgitates some deadly southern-doom riffage that’s fairly reminiscent of Zoroaster once again. I wouldn’t start my own label to sign ‘em, but their music is certainly worthy of a wider audience.
coffintorture.bandcamp.com/album/dismal-planet
