tyrant

Slowly We Rot - Live and Rotting

Gates to Hell (Live)

Cause of Death - Live Infection

Infected (Live)

Static -  DEMO INSTRUMENTAL

Thre trak's are enough, i think...new album jus announched and new EP just finished...let's get down to business now!

March

"ILL OMEN - Decrepit Heart of the Shadow-Sun" from the debut full-length album "Divinity Through Un-creation" released by: www.adverseordermusic.com

ILL OMEN - Decrepit Heart of the Shadow-Sun

Human - Reissue

Together as One

Mercenary

No Guts, No Glory

Left Hand Path

Supposed To Rot

Apocalyptic Raids

Massacra

September Malevolence - ...Accidents Happen So Fast

I fell upon Black Sheep Wall’s first record I Am God Songs by merely perusing Bandcamp. I was pleasantly surprised by their filthy sounding sludgy grooves and towering intensity. So of course I have been anticipating the release of their sophomore LP No Matter Where It Ends for some time now and I am sure a lot of you have been too. But does this new record hold up to the band’s debut offering?


The album opens up with dirty feedback that makes way for earth shattering sludgy guitars and completely filthy basslines on “Agnostic Demon”. This track is eight minutes of pure sonic intensity that will rattle what little brains you have left. The band definitely starts off strong. No Matter Where It Ends features some of the most ungodly heavy riffs known to mankind and combined with low end growls, it can be pretty terrifying. “Virtruvian God” is the only track on the record that is less than five minutes long and in its short one and half minute duration it pummels you with dissonant, slow building riffs that are sure to give you a heart attack. “Torrential” also features some deliciously nasty riffs that Neurosis and Eyehategod wish they would have written. But the album does feature some melodic moments to my surprise. “Liminality” and “Black Church” are extremely heavy and foreboding but they feature a lot of post-metal esque melodicism that make the tracks oddly beautiful at times. But let’s be honest, you’re not listening to this band to be lulled by gorgeous sounds. No, you’re listening to Black Sheep Wall to be wrapped in a rug of sludge metal and beaten to death with a hammer of pulse pounding, blood pumping riffs that can scare young children. No Matter Where It Ends provides all of this and more.

Great riffs aside, by the time I was half way through with this album I was drained. Six to eight minute long tracks of pure sludge can be extremely rewarding and cathartic. But some of the tracks on this thing become so repetitive and uninspired that they bored me to tears. “Personal Prophet” for is six minutes of spaced out chugging that leads nowhere and just sounds like the product of lazy, run of the mill sound writing. “Flesh Tomb” is another one that irked me to no end. It starts of pretty strong with these ridiculous heavy, dissonant grooves but around the halfway mark the band begins to repeat the same chugging section over and over for the rest of the song’s duration; which is twelve minutes by the way.

No Matter Where It Ends vomits a plethora of vile, thunderous riffs into your ear canals. Black Sheep Wall makes The Acacia Strain and similar bands look like a bunch of hacks. But while this album has a lot of delicious heaviness to offer, it fails at times to repetitive song structures and apathetic riffs. But this is just my opinion. What do you think? via: americanaftermath.net

Black Sheep Wall - Torrential

With Vision is the second full-length album release by Place of Skulls. The album was released in 2003 on the Southern Lord Records label. The recording of this album was marked by numerous personnel changes before the final staff was assembled. This is the only Place of Skulls album to feature Scott Weinrich (of The Obsessed, Saint Vitus, Spirit Caravan fame) on vocals and second guitar, as he left soon after to concentrate on The Hidden Hand. Writing credits are far more distributed among the band members than its predecessor, wherein all songs were written solely by Griffin.

Place Of Skulls - Nothing Changes

Cough is one of those bands that you can’t not run into once you get into doom.  They will be in your face as you take your first steps into the vast, miserable ocean of the genre, and their name is very present and out there.  There are two types of bands that demand this kind of attention simply by existing: those that are hyped too much and are made out to be this big thing, and those that are this big because they have merit.

Cough falls into the second category.  The merit in their blend of the art of making misery is what sets them so high, and, for the record, Cough is one of the finest bands out there, period.  Without sliding any further down the slippery slope of fan-bias, let us continue.

At the core of Cough’s music is filth and misery.  The centerpiece of every song is the down-tuned guitars agonizingly churning out low-tempo riffs of dooooooooom - chord-slams, feedback, sludge-like lurches forward and snail-pace grooves.  The bass supports the guitar admirably.  The drumming, especially given the very low speeds at which most songs go about their business, is astonishing, as it finds a way to play with the otherwise very steady rhythms.  Another good thing is the vocals.  Admittedly, the vocals have two main modes, throaty, sort of mid-pitched screaming and the clean ‘singing.’ The clean vocals have a very good range, from doomy, stretched-out shouting to gentle croons, but the mid-pitched bellows of daemons is what sells the vocals.

“Sigillum Luciferi” is one of those albums that is impossible to break down song-by-song.  Oh, I can do it, alright, it just wouldn’t be any good. Instead, I will focus on this album as a whole, which is where my first point lies.  “Sigillum Luciferi” isn’t a collection of songs, it is an album.  It is a coherent whole and at no point do you believe you are listening to anything other than a Cough record.

The atmosphere is miserable, and I do mean the black-hue-and-haze, overbearing, no-hope-in-life, worn-out-in-a-back-alley miserable.  It’s sinister, slow darkness feels like slowly being choked and worse still, liking it.  It’s like loving a noose in its filth, and it’s delicious.  Of course, this is aided by how the riffs themselves are structured, as each one seems to have been tailor-fitted to induce as much misery as possible.  Therein, Cough’s strength appears: “Sigillum Luciferi” is a very refined, very well-thought out effort.  Each song is structured in the way each riff is structured – careful, though natural and heavy without fail.  Each section is refined into a hypnotic, nigh-ritualistic dirge made of repetition and back-and-forth between the few riffs.  This same structure applies to where the songs are placed: after the head-crushing pure beauty of “Hole in the Infinite,” for instance, we are offered solace in the lumbering, sludge-like riff and even pacing of “288 Years of Sin” which, in itself, leads to the utterly lethargic “Northern Plague.”

“Northern Plague” is followed up by a perfect example of how in “Sigillum Luciferi” each part transitions smoothly into each other, so much so that the entire song feels like the natural output of a guitar/bass/drum-strapped beast let loose in his natural habitat.  See, the fifth track, “Shallow Grave” is a case-in-point.  It begins as a doomy Cough dirge: nice monolith riff, slow pacing, but, after a few minutes, the band teases with a bit of playful groove in the riff, before returning to the starter. Then, out of nowhere, the pace suddenly hits an upper-mid-tempo and the band launches into catchy, foot-stomping grooves, and embellish this section further with a burning solo before returning to the initial riff, and then slowly degenerating that into feedback and noise by gradually slowing it down.  It’s genius!

However, for those that may think this is a riff-tastic doom-fest: sorry, but the riffs on this beast are few.  But never mind that, because here, less is undoubtedly more.  See, it’s one thing to make ten, twelve-minute songs with the same two riffs, quite another to make both count in such a way that you are left satisfied.  Returning to the earlier point about structure, the songs themselves have a peculiar quality, in that you can safely drift away from a song, let your mind waver, and it will find a way to snap you back to attention, and you won’t wonder what song you’re on.  That’s a rare and incredible feat, in my book.

A further point emerges right here.  Cough use a lot of feedback.  Hell, the opener, “Killing Fields” is about three and a half minutes of feedback cut by single chords and single drum hits.  In the other songs, like “Shallow Grave”s closing salvoes or some of “Lyssavirus,” the band use feedback to gradually eat away at the remnants of a riff until nothing is left. Their ability to refine that noise into actual riffs and doing it so naturally and so without abrasive transitions is a very good trait of this album.  Further, a convention that was present in “Ritual Abuse” also makes an appearance (in “Lyssavirus” specifically) which is to say that before beginning the initial riff, the guitar plays a stripped-down, almost test-tab version of it for a bit.  It’s a nice trick that creates a jammy impression and fits the album.

SO, OVERALL, WHY SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO THIS? Easy.  It’s one of the best doom records out there, along with “Ritual Abuse.” That’s simply it, no two ways about it.  This record is cut from a different cloth, and cut out to be well fucking worth the almost-hour (57 minutes, to be precise) that it will take from your life in the first listen, and many more almost-hours it will take by virtue of its sheer addictive properties. It doesn’t stray far from where it is comfortable, yeah, but you wouldn’t want it to, anyway. I don’t know how else I can say “perfect,” really, so stop reading this, and go listen to this album.  Go.  Now. (via doommantia.com) 


Cough - Shallow Grave

I have been a Dark Castle fan for a minute, so when I heard they had a new record coming out I was stoked, but at the same time I had very high expectations. With the release of their new album Surrender To All Life Beyond Form, out now via Profound Lore, they fucking blew my mind. Dark Castle has stretched what we call doom & sludge to encompass many more layers that are not usually associated with these genres. I knew something was different by the way the first track, “Surrender To All Life Beyond Form,” started. It begins with this killer dirge bit, then this almost 1st Nations chant comes in, and then on a wave of strange feedback, super distorted blackened vocals kick in – from that point, they had me. Surrender To All Life Beyond Form is a real dark tapestry of sonics, so you will hear something new every time. At certain points when I listen to this album I get the sense as though the songs are alive & breathing, & are trying to tell me something. Dark Castle is heavy as ever on this album, but they are using space as an effect unto itself – they allow the effects they create to transform many times before they introduce another effect. The song “Learning To Unlearn” is haunting experimental doom that explores the textures of bleeps, piano & cavernous vocals that manifest their apocalyptic visions. The emotional impact that the song “To Hide Is To Die” has is fucking transcendental, & Stevie’s singing voice on this track is sublime. With this album, Dark Castle have done what I like to hear bands do – take chances & develop their imagination outside of their comfort zone. The next time I see this band in person I’m going to walk up to them, give them a huge hug & say job well freaking done! It gets better: they are hitting the road this summer with YOB. So after the jump, get all of the tour details & some other surprises. (via cvltnation.com) 


Cough - Shallow Grave

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