Author: Gruesome Greg
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AMATEUR CONCERT PHOTOGRAPHY HOUR: WITCH MOUNTAIN, Volur, Smoulder @ The Garrison, August 4, 2018
It’s nice to see a bill where all the bands are complementary, but not identical–three different shades of doom metal were on display last night.
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AMATEUR CONCERT PHOTOGRAPHY HOUR: SLEEP @ Danforth Music Hall, July 30, 2018
Man, this was the fifth time I’ve seen Sleep since 2010…and the first time they played any new material.
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Horehound – Holocene
Pittsburgh has been a pretty solid, low-key player on the doom scene ever since Dream Death first coined the term “sludge metal” by blending doom and thrash in the 80’s. Continuing the tradition of bands like Penance, Argus and Brimstone Coven, Horehound is currently shopping its second album, Holoscene, to like-minded labels. This six-track, 44-minute…
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Forming the Void – Rift
Lafayette, Louisiana might only be 150 miles from New Orleans, but native sons Forming the Void are much further removed from the NOLA sludge metal of Eyehategod or Crowbar. Their 2017 record Relic reminded me of a cross between Torche and Sleep, with a side of early Mastodon, and landed on my year-end top 10…
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Black Elephant – Cosmic Blues
Album number three from Black Elephant landed in late July on Small Stone Records. Their heavy, fuzzy psychedelic rock is certainly right at home on one of the leading purveyors of stoner rock, as this Italian outfit walk the line between desert rock and vintage psych jams for 34 minutes. “Cosmic Soul” kicks things off with a mellow…
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Weed Demon – Astrological Passages
Now, I know you should never judge a book by its cover, but when the band’s name is Weed Demon, their logo looks like a pot leaf, and they’ve got some crazy spaceship action happening on the record sleeve…it’s gonna be pretty hard for me NOT to dig it. This Columbus crew’s debut has just…
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Spaceslug – Eye the Tide
Only the most seasoned stoner rockers might remember Palm Desert, a band that, despite its tropical moniker, actually hailed from Poland. (Their 2011 album Falls of the Wastelands was pretty decent.) While that outfit was all about the Kyuss worship, its rhythm section now makes up two-thirds of Spaceslug, which might be the Polish sausage…
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Loggerhead – Depths
Muscle Shoals, Alabama is a town with a rich musical history—FAME Studios, The Swampers, Lyrnyrd Skynyrd… but nautical post-sludge metal is probably the last thing that comes to mind. Until now. This local outfit is basically Alabama’s answer to Isis—and they’ve made Depths, their debut album, available for free download on Bandcamp. (Good luck finding…
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AMATEUR CONCERT PHOTOGRAPHY HOUR: YOB/Bell Witch/Vile Creature @ Mod Club, July 4, 2018
Yob’s latest album, Our Raw Heart, is a comparatively lighter, more melodic effort–but that doesn’t make it any less crushing live.
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Alms – Act One
I caught this Baltimore-based band last year at Days of Darkness, where they opened the first day of the festival—a few of their female-fronted doom tunes reminded me of early Blood Ceremony. And yet, while keyboardist Jess Kamen’s vocals feature prominently on nearly all of the six songs on Act One, they are not strictly…