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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Limb – Saboteurs of the Sun
It’s always great to hear a band progress and grow organically. Limb’s song-writing has improved massively. Saboteurs of the Sun (a fine title by the way) has excellent catchy songs that form a cohesive and complementary whole as an album. Limb have moved to territory previously occupied by Hawkwind, Monster Magnet and Mastodon, displaying imagination and…
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Sleep – The Sciences
Those sneaky bastards! After being my most-anticipated album for the past two or three years in a row, Sleep finally released their first full-length of new material in 20 years secretly, with no advanced fanfare, on 4/20. Because of course. The Sciences spans 53 minutes, and finally sees a proper studio recording of long-time live-set…
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Hashteroid – self-titled
I gotta hand it to this Vancouver outfit—as far as stoner band name puns go, Hashteroid is a pretty good one. But if you’re looking for Weedeater and Bongzilla worship from this trio’s debut, you might be mistaken. These guys take a faster-paced, punkier approach to stoner rock, more along the lines of The Shrine,…
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Bang – Best of Bang
Back in the early 70’s, it wasn’t unusual for a heavy rock band to score a major-label deal, release two to three albums, and then disappear. But thanks to the powers of modern technology, many such artists have achieved cult status, from Jerusalem to Leaf Hound, Sir Lord Baltimore to Captain Beyond. One other such…
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Melvins – Pinkus Abortion Technician
The Melvins are to bassists what Spinal Tap is to drummers. After recording with no fewer than six bassists on their last album, fittingly titled Basses Loaded, they’ve now employed two permanent four-stringers on this release—Steven McDonald of Redd Kross, who was part of their last tour, and Jeff Pinkus of Butthole Surfers fame, who…
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Body Void – I Live Inside a Burning House
Generally speaking, sludge metal is not about good times or made by happy people. While depression, divorce and drug addiction have previously inspired other sludge albums, Body Void is the first time I’ve seen a band tackle the topic of queer identity via heavy, crushing, knuckle-dragging doom. I kinda wish this promo came with a…
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Wrong – Feel Great
When a noise-rock record is called Feel Great, you know it’s probably being used ironically. The sophomore effort from this Florida outfit offers little in the way of positive vibes or uplifting feelings throughout its 11-track, 30-minute runtime. “Errordome” kicks off this effort with some chunky, gurgling slowcore à la Unsane, throwing in a few…
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Tunguska Mammoth – Breathless
Combining a large prehistoric beast with the site of a massive natural explosion makes for quite a powerful moniker; in the case of Montreal’s Tunguska Mammoth, their heavy stoner/sludge sound lives up to it. Their Deathbound Records debut offers eight tracks in just shy of 46 minutes, and leaves a few extinct creatures in its…
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Conan/Slomatics split (reissue)
Before Conan became the next big thing in volume-shattering sludge, they collaborated with their countrymen Slomatics on this six-song split. First released in 2011, this record was recently reissued on vinyl by Black Bow Records. I dunno guy, but 180-gram might not be heavy enough… Conan takes three tracks on Side A, although the second…
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CHRCH – Light Will Consume Us All
Neurot Records does well in finding bands aligned with the vision of its founders, the mighty Neurosis—and this California outfit is no exception. The second album from Sacramento quintet CHRCH (the u is not only silent, but invisible?) features just three tracks spanning 45 minutes. Suffice to say, there are a few lengthy post-sludge epics…