Bone Crunching Carnage That Will Fuck Up Your Entire Day

Jesus, after dealing with a week of my poor little south-of-the-Mason-Dixon city struggling to deal with the twelve inches of snow dumped on us last weekend it's no fucking wonder some of the most miserable music in the world comes from such frost-addled climes as Norway, Sweden, and the home to today's music lesson, Finland. Thankfully not another run-of-the-mill black metal band (my initial idea for this post), the oddly named Arson Under The Sea spawn from the city of Oulu and play a rather devastating blend of sludge noise which was perfect to be pissed-off and shovel my driveway to (actually, it was the band's no-nonsense self-description I used in the post header that initially hooked me). The band has a few short releases, my favorite is their 2013 demo for an EP which came out a year later. Raw, overdub-free practice space recording which is probably the closest thing to the band live you can get from this side of the pond. If you like what you hear be sure to check out the plethora of websites fronted by this internet-savvy band: fb/bc/tumblr.

Oarfish

Lo-fi lovers unite...

As raw as they come these days, the Kent, UK three-piece calling themselves Sorg stumbled late into my bandcamp search results long after I had expected to discover anything worthwhile. Vaguely reminding me of the Fuckheads and/or any other bunch of pissed-off guys projecting their pent-up rage towards the world/job/girlfriend/parent/whatever via a musical instrument, the shit is pissed off and groovy to listen to. The band claims to play a mixture of black metal/sludge/powerviolence/hardcore and I'd agree with genres 2 and 4 - I'm bereft to to find the black metal connection here and I still don't really know what the fuck "powerviolence" is. My favorite song is easily "Sludge Cunt" (Yes! The best song name in the world!), a tune that totally reminds me of Loinen or Usko or some weird black Finnish sludgecore band. Am I digressing? Absolutely worth a listen. 

The Fall

loud. noisy. grating.

Sweet fucking debut EP from a bunch of insane Austrian grinders; this is not the same defunct post-metal Brooklyn, NY two-piece I raved about a few years ago. Instead Orphan blasts forth from the middle of nowhere (actually Linz, Austria) and are a blistering amalgam of metalcore (Burnt By The Sun maybe?) grind, and insane break-heavy hardcore à la the first See You Next Tuesday record. Of course the noisy nonsense is all over in about 15 manic minutes but it never gets tiring and most bands wish they could fit so many grooves into a single record. The band is actively touring around eastern Europe this summer so catch these crazy fuckers if at all possible. Facebook here. Bandcamp there. Enjoy.

grow. shine. wither. die.

Lovecraft Worship

Solid 4-track E.P. (demo?) from an elusive RVA five-piece that I can barely find anything about. Fronted by attractive, well-tattooed female lead singer K.Z., I am unsure if the above I Am Providence was recorded by the time she joined the band in 2010, as the vocals sound significantly less screamo than their later albums. Actually, it makes me wonder if this E.P. is even by the same band as there's no mention of I Am Providence on any of the various bios I've found around the internet. Regardless, this is good ol' southern sludge with a definite Soilent Green influence. Heavy-handed with Lovecraftian references, my favorite track is the trippy, riff-heavy "Glossolallia." I was happy to discover the band is still chugging away and recently released a two-song cover E.P. - drop some duckets for a local DIY band here. Enjoy.

Stenchcore

Glamourpuss

The first release from the prolific Athens, GA duo Jucifer. Recorded in the rundown home of band members Amber Valentine and Edgar Livengood in 1994 and locally distributed via cassette (exact quantities unknown), the recording eventually made its way to Grindcore Karaoke Records and got mastered by AxCx/AgN vet Scott Hull (if anyone wants the first-person recount it's available here). While their newer stuff suffers from overproduction (especially their forgettable foray with Relapse Records), Nadir is the absolute essence of the doom sludge genre. Exactly what I want from a band. Sounding like a lo-fi 4-track bastard mix of Otesanek and whatever Eyehategod clone you're listening to, the five dronish doom tracks reek of alcohol and dirt with vocals straight from the mutant Agent Orange baby in Combat Shock. Just the drums alone make me want to smash shit. Awesome stuff, this is what bands like Soilent Green aspire to. Enjoy.

Love And Squalor

Long Live The Cock

It's tough to top your debut album, especially when that auspicious release is Fresh White Reeboks Kickin Your Ass but San Fran supergroup Nigel Pepper Cock did exactly that with The New Way. Released just a year after their inaugural EP, their one and only full-length is chock full of old-school nods (Black Sabbath and Crass) as well as simple fucking sludgepunk slam. My favorite song is the metalcore-ish metal "Respect" - it seems so wonderfully unrehearsed and screams for a bloody mosh pit. The rest of it is a psychotically manic joyride of noise - I guarantee you will be pleasantly surprised by this one.

Jailbait Not Allowed

The Last Will

Recorded back in late 2013, the mighty Argentinian sludge quartet Asilo destroy on this three-way split with fellow countrymen Uroboros (death metal) and El Caos Reptante (Electric Wizard-ish doom). While these five songs showed up on the band's respectable full-length Comunión last year, this live studio recording absolutely blows each of them away. Totally raw as fuck, lead singer Gabriel sounds absolutely fucking insane, screaming like a coked-up banshee against Platino's muted Otesanek-ish background growls. I've probably heard six different versions of "Geografías" and this is my favorite - the rambling dirge at the end is both hilarious and heavy. Enjoy some of the best double-bass guitar sludge I've heard in a long while...

No Nacho

Ole Gravy Leg

Banking a sharp 180º degree turn from last post comes a solid slab of lo-fi dirge metal from obscure Erie, PA sludgers Village Of Dead Roads. Allegedly recorded in one live take, their debut full-length trudges along like a drunken rhino; slow and repetitive yet still managing to pull off some really inspired moments. The sluggish breakdowns in "Blind Albino" (slickly overdubbed with some bad-ass obscure movie samples - Bad Lieutenant maybe?) are completely addictive and could happily go on forever. My favorite track is "Ole Gravy Leg" - a song that totally fulfilled my expectations the first time I heard it. The riffage, brutal outro breakdown... everything fits to an absolute tee. Almost a perfect song. My only complaint with Dwelling In Doubt are the way-too-many "skit" tracks of noise-ish nonsense. Just get with the fucking music motherfuckers. Enjoy.

Abjection

Satanic Winter

I was sold on their 2013 Anhedonia solely for the fact that they covered all 14 miserable minutes of one of my favorite Loinen songs - the inescapable "Lihaa" ("Flesh" for you non-Finnish speakers). Moscow's Thy Grave is a solid drone/sludge outfit harnessing the spirit of such wretched overlords as Otesanek and Thou with eager aplomb. They just released a couple tracks last week on a split CD with Torf (Ukraine stoners) and Sixpackgods (Finnish noise rock) but what really caught my attention was the band's amazing Talvisaatana demo from earlier this year. While the songs on the split CD are somewhat funeral doomy and not quite as bitter as I'd hoped, the demo versions are fucking awesome. Raw and underproduced - recorded on single mic, no after effects or whatever. The screaming lyrics sound a hell of a lot harsher as well. There's a live track thrown in to round it all out; fucking heavy-ass shit to wreck your brain. Check 'em out here.

Skrelnik

Razor blade included...

I don't if this technically qualifies me as weird but there have been like 3 or 4 albums I've bought in my lifetime that came with a razor blade. This 7" is one of those exalted (offhand, others include GG Allin's Illegitimate Kids cassette and one of the Abruptum albums) and is probably my favorite. As usual, this was one of the "alternatives" in a Relapse Records order that fucking blew away the token grindcore tripe I had intended to order (sorry Dead Infection). While "Sleep" is a good but not great Dystopia track; "Lifeless" and especially "Fucked Upstairs" are easily my favorite Grief songs. I like Grief but their albums tend to get a bit looooong at times (yeah, yeah I know it's doom metal...) but these songs are amazing. I played the downtuned power chords to "Fucked Upstairs" half of my senior year in college so I could bang gothy art school sluts by pretending it was my own miserable song. I guess the joke is on you bitches! Except for that HPV. Enjoy.

Dismal

Snail Trail

Adolf Satan's eponymous debut was a wicked awesome slurry of down-tuned sludgecore and frantic ranting by poet/madman Larry Lifeless; easily one of my favorite albums of the last ten years. Their three-song follow-up, 2007's Ooga Booga Cab Company had a tough act to follow but succeeds by being even more lo-fi and crazier than its predecessor. Self-produced, self-released and recorded on what sounds like a tape deck, Lifeless's manic depressive shrieking is is taken to another level on this one. The grooving sludge is there as well, much in the style of their full-length so if you like those kind of scale-progression power-chord punch-you-in-the-fucking-face riffs look no further. Enjoy.

 

Inject The Venom

XIII

Relentless down-home Southern sludge from a NY-based female power trio in the spirit of early-90's behemoths like Corrupted and Noothgrush. Only around long enough to release one single and appear on a few vinyl splits, 13 never managed to record a full length - I'd love to see a CD comp of all their work as their individual records have become somewhat elusive twenty years after the fact. Regarding this 1993 release, while both songs crush, the Corrupted-esque "Hollow" is my favorite of the two. Guitarist Liz Buckingham has gone on to have a rather prolific musical career, after 13's breakup she played with fellow sludgers Sourvein for several years, then moved to the UK in 2003 to join seminal doom unit Electric Wizard.

Hollow/Bound

Prog Sludge

A decade or so ago, while completely immersed in the throes of greatness that was The Abominable Iron Sloth, I was pretty much buying any album remotely linked to the band, whether through Amazon's generated "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought..." links or such now-antiquated means as AIS's Myspace friends. One way or another I ended up with LA's Intronaut in my shopping cart and upon excitedly throwing it in my CD player expecting Abominable II I was somewhat... disappointed. And by "somewhat" I mean "extremely". Don't get me wrong (and Intronaut purists out there put down your AK's), Void is not a bad album for what it is - actually I'm sure in the heavy prog metal world it's regarded as a landmark achievement, it's just not my style. I was never a Tool fan, not into Perfect Circle or even Mastodon for that matter. I was hoping for minimalist bone-crushing ear-splitting sludgecore and unfortunately, this album was void of that. Closing point, if you are into any of those aforementioned bands you will fucking love this.

Teledildonics

Riot Season

I was introduced to the mighty eight-piece(!) that is Hey Colossus thanks to an excellent split LP w/ fellow sludgers dot(.). Their first album, the aptly titled Hey Colossus Hates You is a commendable example of downtuned, riff-heavy sludge. Mostly good fuzzy grooves (without oozing to far into "stoner-rock" territory), a couple of the songs actually tread the waters of post-grunge. The monstrous "A Witch Is Born" chews up one whole side of the album, an 18-minute Electric Wizard-ish opus which coincidentally is the first song the band wrote together. Nothing like raising the bar straight out of the gate, guys. The band recently celebrated its eighth full-length release and still plays the occasional live show - they've got an occasionally updated blog that has some cool links and shit so check 'em out.

Sonic Gluttony

Black Hole

Here's a fantastic three-song debut EP (well, I call it an EP but it runs almost 45 minutes) of doom-laden sludge from the south coast of England. Heavy-as-fuck drone riffs under weirdly echoing howls from hell. It calms down a tad for the 22-minute finale "Please Maintain" - an epic of pain and suffering. Highly recommended. For some more info on the band (as well as limited merch), get over to Riot Season Records' page. Enjoy.

Unwholesome 

Shorter Vocal Chord Blues

Ear-piercing, doom-laden sludge from up I-95 in the D.C. suburbs, Salome's final LP is a quality bookend to a half-decade run in extreme music. A lot has been written about their lead singer, the relatively attractive Kat Katz (currently screaming for Agoraphobic Nosebleed) pretty much because, well, she's a relatively attractive blonde singing for Salome. I gotta be honest though, after the initial visual she just doesn't do it for me. The music is fucking awesome, hands down. But the vocals just seem thin and no matter how I try I just can't get around being somewhat irritated by them. Some old school growler/screamer in there (Jacob Bannon from Converge comes to mind) and I think the band would have really been something else. But I digress from my petty (and aberrant considering the band's diehard fanbase) bitching, it's a quality album - every song is a keeper, even the twenty-minute noise/drone opus "An Accident Of History". Enjoy.

Epidemic

Basement Split

Here is a curious little item courtesy of Argentina's Chainfuck Records. Two obscure Córdoba bands doing their best to keep the DIY lo-fi spirit going with an mp3-only split release. Starting this one off is a lo-fi grind/noise project (I assume it's just one guy) named Bisected. While the first track is pretty much a throwaway, I found myself really digging the second, "Kommandant Orgy." I can't remember what song it's completely derivative of (maybe something by Slayer?) but it still has a cool groove and kept me interested for the 46 seconds it runs. Aileen Wuornos is a self-described one-man "crust-grind-metal-lofi-cyber" project but I found his material wallowing more in the sludge/drone genre. A waaaay overused sample from Peter Jackson's Bad Taste opens the feedback-laden cacophony of howls - nothing too special but perfectly listenable. I actually enjoyed some of his other releases (particularly "Sonic Pressure") - check out another one here here and enjoy.

Descargar

Scarver's Calling

Better-than-average serial-killer hatecore from Akron, Ohio. But who are we kidding here, the only reason anyone's ever heard of Scarver's Calling is the fact they made it onto a 1999 split 7" with Japanese sludge gods Corrupted. Take the two guitarists and bassist from obscure Cleveland grinders Apartment 213, add a few vocalists and the drummer from Sloth and there ya go: new band. Surprisingly the songs were actually written during the Apartment 213 time period and "Mangler" actually appears on a 213 split 7". The music is pretty solid although the crusty Macabre-ish high/low vocal pairing can get a bit grating. The deep vocalist sounds exactly like the guy from Fornicator and the high one sounds like the dude from Macabre's "Embalmer" (off their Gloom album). The songs have a particularly mean fucking vibe - especially the "Missing Child" one - it just goes on forever. Perfect for all you brooding sociopaths out there. I also included the Corrupted track, a nice change of pace in the fact that it only runs 5 minutes (although I expect the original recording went on a lot longer - there's a weird out-of-place fade at the end); typical pounding sludge from seasoned verterans of the genre.

Driven To Download

Shub-Niggurath Sludge

I am definitely not as much into this Birmingham, AL sludge quartet as I was when I wrote about them last year, heralding them as the new big thing. Still, Nauseated And Terrified For The Future, recorded in 2010 is a solid slab of heavy Lovecraftian sludge, much in the vein of Black Cobra. Interestingly, this demo's title couldn't have been more apt - after another recording session in 2011 the brand broke up under unpleasant circumstances - so much so that song credits came under dispute and the band decided to "lose" its entire back catalog. As of late last year the band has reformed with different members and is playing a gig here and there around Birmingham; one new song has been recorded and they have a pretty amusing (albeit rarely updated) website here. As for the 2010 incarnation of the band, there is a lot to like - very, very swampy sludge that just gurgles from the bayou. I especially like what they were trying to do with the epic closer "The Great Release" as the song floats from jazz to doom in the most schizophrenic jam session ever. Enjoy.

Invoke

Black Mass

Uneven sophomore LP by Boston sludge-meisters Upsidedown Cross. While still a lot better than anything else coming out of the area at the time, when compared to their 1991 eponymous debut it's significantly tougher to listen to. Let's just say more harsh. I don't know if it's overdubbed or not, but the high-pitched lead guitar really grated my nerves at times (of course it wouldn't surprise me if that was the intended point) and the songs are also longer as well which can become tiresome (I think Taang! originally released this gem as a double LP). Anti-lyricist Larry Lifeless rambling his trademark poetry with drunken abandon is the reason you need to have this record, a true audio snapshot of a tortured artist. "Sleazy Mary" is the standout track, a miserable blasphemous rant over an absolutely sick death/sludge/doom cacophony. Probably the last song recorded at the album session when everyone was just drunk, tired, pissed and hated each other's guts. Enjoy.

Blasphemy