Category: Reviews – Audio
Glorious metal in all its earthly forms, compressed onto shiny plastic discs or into digital files. Which ones will become the soundtrack to your life?
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Orange Goblin – The Wolf Bites Back
As the Elder Gods of Metal die or retire, we need new legends to fill the void left in their sonic wake: Orange Goblin are one such band. They’ve earned it, putting in the hard work live and on vinyl. Indeed their headlining performance at last year’s Siege of Limerick is itself becoming legendary. The…
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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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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…
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Ancestors – Suspended in Reflections
It’s been six years since we’ve had new music from Ancestors, a proggy post-sludge outfit that’s apparently gone from a quintet to a three-piece in the process. Not only have they slimmed down their lineup, but they also seem to have trimmed the fat. While 2012’s In Dreams and Time featured six tracks spanning 66…
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Troll – self-titled
Now, “The Troll” is not my favourite Saint Vitus song. Not even on Mournful Cries. (“Dragon Time” FTW!) But when you’ve got a trad doom band from Portland ostensibly named after a Vitus track, I’m pretty much guaranteed to give it a listen. This album was actually self-released on cassette in 2016, before Shadow Kingdom…
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Ivar Bjørnson and Einar Selvik – Hugsjá
The previous collaboration from Ivar Bjørnson of Enslaved and Einar Selvik of Wardruna, Skuggsjá, was both an achievement and a success (though you would expect nothing less from such individuals). Follow-up Hugsjá is, simply put, a beautiful piece of music, one that works perfectly well as a body of work. The word Hugsjá means to see…
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King Heavy – Guardian Demons
Understandably, when you’re trying to form a classic doom metal band in Chile, you might have some trouble finding a singer. In the case of King Heavy, that meant enlisting Luther Veldmark, a native of Belgium. And while their debut album was recorded without him setting foot in the country, they flew Veldmark over to…
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Witchsorrow – Hexenhammer
Out of all the doom bands with “Witch” in their name, Witchsorrow is right up there with Witch Mountain in my books. Album number four from this U.K. power trio sees them continuing in the classic doom vein, with enough references to demons and devils to keep their “Occult Doom Club” membership active. And yet,…