DOOM AROUND THE WORLD!

There was a day and time when I never paid attention to the news. I couldn’t have told you if it was going to rain or shine tomorrow, much less who was the governor of my state, because I just didn’t give a damn. Now, I’m a news addict. I wake up in the morning looking for my daily fix of dread and am sorely disappointed when there are no mass suicides, political scandals, or idle threats of war. Thankfully, there is plenty in the dailies to keep us in full-force, teeth-clenched fear. So while you’re digging your bomb shelter, stocking up on your arsenal of 2nd Amendment Rights, and ordering your bonus buckets from Rev. Jim Baker, here are some tunes to remind you that you are, you know, done for.

Come experience the mirth and the madness with me, as we trudge on towards oblivion, slowly headbang ourselves bloody with two fistfuls of riffs. It’s another edition of…

Poland

We begin our plodding walk of woe in Wroclaw, where we encounter four dudes with a wake-up call: they just want to burn this motherfucker down. Meet Damian (vocals), Krzysztof (guitar), Piotr (bass guitar), and Gniewko (drums) of BLACK SMOKE. These rowdies released ‘Fuck Society’ (2015) in autumn and, like so many records that came out last year, I almost missed it entirely. Were it not for Krzysztof taking the effort to send me a CD, I might have missed this entirely. And that would have been a shame, because I’d have missed out on a cathartic concoction of punk adrenaline, tempered by simmering, sludgy rage. The end result is heavy enough to merit the “doom” moniker, particularly a track like “Doomed Goat” (how’d you know that’d be my fav?) or “Crossed Hands”. The record warrants favorable comparisons to Meth Drinker, Sea Bastard, and (yes) Eyehategod, not to mention their compatriots 71TONMAN, Legalize Crime, and, of course, O.D.R.A. 'Fuck Society’ is a brief listen at just six tracks, perfect for the get-up-and-go Monday morning when you just need more than a nudge, you need a kick right square in the nuts, to motivate your sorry ass to get up and earn your daily bread. I think you’ll be singing the titular anthem (track 5) on the way out the door.

Canada

The next spot on our globe trek: Canada (aka future Annexed United States of America - Trudeau, I told you should have followed Donald’s lead and built that god damned wall). Alberta is our destination, where recent raging wildfires are currently giving us a new visual index to the word apocalyptic. Here we encounter WITCHSTONE, whose recent split with The Death Wheelers on Sunmask Records is well worth a gander. The Witchstone side has two meaty tracks that contrast well with the sleazy biker rock of their companions. Witchstone have truly mastered the art of psychedelic doom, in case there were any doubts that these two genres could be happily married. Fans of Sleep will find a few nods to Holy Mountain in “Altar Riot, “along with some desertic twangs that conjure visions of an acid soaked Spaghetti Western though the vocals are pure satanic venom (a la Bongzilla). The song is performed with complete confidence (the drumming in the last minutes is possessed). Here is a band clearly at the top of its game. I’d not listened to much Witchstone prior to this, so I’m anxious to delve into the band’s back catalog now (and curious to see them perform live).

Peru

I had no inkling that such ungodly treasure awaited me in Lima, where I first encountered the album, 'La noche de los tiempos’ (2016) by NOCTURNO. After a diabolical invocation, we are introduced to one of the finest instrumental songs I’ve heard this year: "El espíritu de la serpiente.” Really, you need to hear this - it’s a beautiful thing what Heinz “Azazel” Wuttig (guitar) Félix Dextre (bass) Cesar Araujo (drums) have done, taking a familiar form and infusing it with dark power and rhythmic vitality. Oh, and it keeps getting better. Azazel’s solos in “El sueño del incubo” are jaw-dropping. The guy’s a bona fide virtuoso. Even the well-trodden blues metal strains of a song like “La danza de las hijas del viento” benefits from his superior musicianship. All three show great collaborative prowess in my favorite track of the album, the ominous “La noche de los tiempos.” If you love Sabbath-inspired doom, and you don’t want your doom to be fucked-up by vocals you don’t particular care for, then you’re quite likely to find this album as endlessly satisfying as I. The cover art, it bears mention, is fantastically penned by José Gabriel Alegría Sabogal.

Italy

One of the constant anxieties I live with is that there is somewhere out there great doom that I’m missing out on. 'Belfry’ (2016) by Italian quartet MESSA is getting raving mad reviews from the Bandcampers. Our own Zachary Painter remarks, “If you are debating paying for this, just know that I’ve listened to it for not even 20 minutes yet and it’s already one of my favorite albums of the year if not THE album of the year. They write with absolute authority. This is music to get lost in, eyes peeled, glazed red and staring into the stars.” Doubtless, the 10-song album deserves a track-by-track review, if not definitely a vinyl release. It’s a feast for audiophiles and fuzz-maniacs, from the get-go, with thoughtful texturing of sound and endearing female vocals. The song-writing is intense, drawing from a patchwork of stylistic influences - black and ambient, punk and prog - all of which have been melted into “a sonic cauldron that the band defines as Scarlett Doom.” Here’s the music video for “Babalon” - I think you’ll fall in love.

Czech Republic

Another old soul has returned with new music: QUERCUS. The Czech funeral doomers (playing since 2001) have outdone themselves this time around with this, their third full-length. 'Heart With Bread’ (2016) is impressive right out of the gate, where we’re introduced to the band’s sound on a grand scale with a mother-fucking church pipe organ. Excuse my language, but this impressed me. What could be more doom than a Bach-style pipe organ? Holy Christ! We’re in for a godly time. All joviality aside, Quercus approach this music making as high art. In fact, the band does what I think is a first - a metal cover of “My Heart’s in the Highlands” by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, and perhaps add something of their own to the classical repertoire with the 22-minute wonder, “A Canticle For The Pipe Organ.” Fans of funeral doom pioneers like Esoteric, Skepticism, and Thergothon will revel in this dirge of epic death-doom.

Greece

I admit it. The album art suckered me into this one, so I was predisposed to a favorable review - though the skeptical side of me said, “Brace yourself, just in case it’s a disappointment.” When I learned that the Athens-based GREEN YETI featured members of Brotherhood of Sleep and the late, great Stonenrow (who was, effectively, Greece’s answer to Electric Wizard). Now you’d better now disappointment, you wily hulk of an ape man. The first track didn’t exactly wow me, though it starts competently enough. It’s not until the development section that we see what these three can do with a riff - a they do improvise the hell out of it. Danis Avramidis has a great voice and is no slouch with the guitar. “The Yeti Has Landed” goes the distance at 16 minutes and I was curious, if nothing else, to hear what followed. Indeed it gets better from here. In fact, I was starting to feel a sense of connection between the pieces (whether by coincidence or design). “Acari” bears evidence of the Stonenrow of old, though its clear by now that Green Yeti are taking a distinctively psychedelic approach to their doom. Is it psychedelic doom or doomed psychedelia? You decide. “Old Man” is by far my favorite of the record, with it’s assertive beat, working bass and drums against guitar. Yeah, they’re onto something here. This is the groove! By this time in the record, I’m a believer in Yeti, green or otherwise. Clocking in at over an hour, these four tracks will keep your blood levels of doom high for a good while.

United Kingdom

By now we’ve had a taste of all kinds of doom from the four corners of earth - instrumental, funeral, sludge, traditional, and avante garde. Something is happening in London we must bear witness to. The doom is strong here. The album cover for GHOLD’s 'PYR’ (2016 - Ritual Productions) looks like a nuclear blast in progress, or perhaps the visual representation of the stomping mad wall of sound we bear witness to in these four songs. It’s rough and tumble stuff - almost industrial at times - with throaty, raging vocals almost drowned out by the crushing bass, noise, and cymbals. Somehow it works. This is music that will grow hair on your chest. Hell, I went out and bought an axe and some wood to chop and did it like a pro, thanks to that second track, “Blud.” I think I might model for the cover of Green Yeti’s next album after this experience. Ghold may well be the new face of English doom (an heir to the beat-driven style of Godflesh before them). 'Pyre’ is brash, abrasive, and grand on a Wagnerian scale (the last track “Despert Thrang” is a monument!). The Goate is well-pleased with this offering of sound.

United States

We land this strange and twisted journey by land, air, and sea in my home sweet home on the West Coast, where we take in some astonishing developments in the heavy underground, chief among them Shasta Lake’s WORSHIP OF KERES. The Cali crew of Elise Tarens (vox), Matthew Woods Wilhoit (guitar), Robert Lander (bass), and Trevor William Church (drums) have collaborated on one outstanding EP. Believe me when I say, each of these songs (here called “Books”) will etch into your memory, like a strange and sublime dream, thanks in no small part to Elise’s enchanted vocals. It’s quite an accomplished debut, meriting favorable comparisons with Sabbath Assembly, Windhand, Blood Ceremony, and this next one…

If you’re one of those whiners who claims that all doom has become derivative knock-offs of Electric Wizard and Sleep and you long (however skeptically) for an original voice, you need an encounter with EYE OF NIX. I’ve captured them live twice now and continue to be impressed by the masterful vocalizations of Joy Von Spain, who has the gusto of a Metropolitan Opera singer, with a crisscross of blackened doom, psychedelic haze, and post-metal cerebralismo. The Seattle quintet have stolen my heart and endeared my respect, with songs like “Elysium Elusive,” “Turned to Ash,” and (especially) that stunner of a closer, “Optime Vero.” Here’s some footage I shot of the band during their 'Moros’ (2015) tour, playing Portland’s High Water Mark Lounge. That last number will leave you breathless.

You knew it would end here. My sinister siren song leads the hazed and dazed minions to the City of Roses, where we encounter the 'Last Vestige of Humanity’ (2015) - the debut full-length by MAMMOTH SALMON. There’s heavy, and then there’s HEAVY, and Paul Dudziak (guitar/vocals), Matt Howl (bass), and Chad Walter (drums) are straight up ferocious here, particularly in songs like “Ad Nauseam,” “Memoriam,” and “Shattered Existence,” which (as I recently wrote in October Doom Magazine) are “well-crafted stompers.”

I dare say that Mammoth Salmon are even more ravenous live (my favorite time filming them: at the stroke of midnight, playing next to the railroad to the backdrop of concertina wired fence outside of The Wandering Goat). Amusingly, Mammoth Salmon were once given expert advice from the judge of a battle of the bands competition to change their name from Mammoth Salmon to something more…relatable. I knew then and there that judge was most certainly from California, for there is nothing more Oregonian than a honking huge-ass chinook or steelhead salmon caught in the month of May!

As an aside, that album cover is the work of Eugene artist Sean Schock, who also designed our bitchin’ Doomed & Stoned t-shirt (available here). With that, we rest our weary feat until the Pied Piper of Doom comes calling again next week!

Bon appétit