Various ‎– Sage Rage

Live gig recorded in Gateshead in 2007 featuring Jazzfinger, Marzuraan, Monoblock, Byron Coley/Alex Neilson, Culver and Noisebastard. 2007 cdr on Fuckin' Amateurs.

Download

Allee Der Kosmonauten ‎– Sphärenharmonien [Demo tape]

And this is their first demo release, which is a mix of jammy sludgy noise rock and dark, heavy hardcore/crust. Good stuff. 2001 self-released tape.

Download

Allee Der Kosmonauten ‎– Allee Der Kosmonauten LP

A now defunct band from Germany that fuses sludgy tones with noise rock and epic crust/punk influences with tortured female vocals. I saw them live years ago in Greece and they were the business on stage. 2007 LP jointly released by Institut Für Mentale Hygiene, Unsociable, Behind The Scenes, Bedbeforebreakfast, and Trująca Fala.

Download 

Corrupted & Infaust split 7"

Wishes for a happy new year full of joy and peace are incomplete without a post on Corrupted, the greatest purveyors of sonic despair and apocalypse from Japan. Their track on this split, "Other Side," is a devastating piece of the heaviest possible doom/sludge with an addictive frozen black metal arpeggiated feel that increases the feeling of devastation and is proper listening during the extreme winter conditions where I am right now. On the flip-side Infaust from Germany offer a good track of sludge with a hardcore approach; it's quite good, but of course nothing and nobody can reach Corrupted. 2002 7" on Blind Date Records.

Download

Neurosis - Sovereign + BONUS TRACKS + VISUALS

The final installation of Neurosis Times of Grace after the release of the companion album Grace by Tribes of Neurot, which was created to be played simultaneously with the parent album (in the Halo-Guattarri post I had mentioned a particular sample from that great album...) is the Sovereign EP, which takes its cue from the last track of Times of Grace called "The Road to Sovereignty" and expands on that track's mood. Times of Grace was to be Neurosis' last "loud" album for some years, as from Sovereign up to The Eye of Every Storm they became quieter and more subdued or "neurotic." And actually after they decided to become louder again with Given To The Rising, they started sucking unbelievably, and the three albums they've released since then are godawful and the epitome of what happens when you decide to play "metal."

Anyway, Sovereign paves the way for the style they fully explored on A Sun That Never Sets, and possesses a similar sound with lots of acoustic guitar and the clear production of Steve Albini, which, although quite good for others, sounds too clean for me for Neurosis. Let's see what he'll do with the forthcoming Sunn O))) album.

The main interest of Sovereign though is the four bonus track that were only found on the cd-rom part of the cd. For some reason when I decided to make this post, the cd-rom part was no longer playable due to changes in their website or some shit, and the only thing I could retrieve was some visuals. I emailed them to see if they could send me the tracks, never got a reply, but fortunately I found them on a dvd-r where I had saved them. Phew. Of these four tracks, only one has made to other releases, and more particularly "Misgiven," which was included in the remastered release. 2000 cd on Neurot Recordings.

Happy new year!

Neurosis - Sovereign the bonus tracks

Neurosis - Sovereign the actual album

Neurosis - Sovereign the visuals 

Unearthly Trance ‎– Season Of Seance, Science Of Silence cd

It was on a cold December day of 2003 that I bought the debut of Long Island's faves Unearthly Trance, after having already been mindblown by the Frost Walk With Me 7" and the amazing Beast Eye Open To The Sky LP by side project of singer/guitarist Ryan Lipinsky, Thralldom, and I remember listening to it non-stop during the Xmas holidays. While in later albums Unearthly Trance would adopt a crustier and tighter approach, with more elements by black metal and hardcore, in this one they are in a spiral of heavy-like-hippo-shit doom/sludge, with undertones of black metal and drone, doses of Celtic Frost goodness, and even ritual black ambient. Coupled with a lo-fi, but strong on the bass, production by Stephen O' Malley, this is one of the best doom/sludge albums of all time, and one that again arguably proves that Relapse can turn otherwise promising bands into more mediocre outfits when they manage to get their little corporate hands on them. The slow crushing riffs, the spacious production, and Lipinsky's desperate clean vocals, as well as his sinister rasps, proved an ideal showcase for one of this blog's dictums on your right hand, the one saying that good music is the music that makes you fall asleep, and this is what this album did many a time during cold and bleak wintry days. Highly recommended, up to par with Electric Wizard's Let Us Prey, Cathedral's Forest of Equilibrium, and Winter's Eternal Frost. 2003 cd on Rise Above Records.Download

Marzuraan ‎– Live At Least cdr

Live is where Marzuraan is at it! While in the studio they play very thick sludgy doom, they still sound kinda lukewarm, but in a live environment it sounds appropriately crushing, what with relentless crash cymbal banging and a heavy bass tone by Lee Stokoe to accompany free form guitar apocalypse. 2005 cdr on Traqueto.

Download

Halo - Body Of Light

Second Relapse album for Australian industrial/noise/sludge duo Halo after the amazing Guattari, and sadly their last release, as they ceased to exist after a series of aborted recordings that they didn't consider satisfactory. The sound is somewhat less chaotic than Guattari and their previous self-released albums, but at the same time sounds more crushing in its more focused approach, making their early Swans and Godflesh influences more prominent (especially in Filling The Empty Spaces With Cash, which could have been a song on Young God). Oppressive music at its best. 2003 cd on Relapse.

Download

Giant - Song cd

One of the last good albums of the genre that came to be called "post-metal" (yeah dude when Isis broke out we named this experimental sludge or whatever, post-metal my ass), a genre that too quickly deteriorated into post-rock and Toolish stupidity(with Isis going that way too), Giant played heavy and mournful epic doom with a good sense of melody and dynamics that avoid the shoegazy style of many post metal bands. After a naming dispute they morphed into Braveyoung and abandoned this style along with metal in general and played great orchestral post-rock, and ended last year with the masterpiece Misery And Pride. Now they continue as MSC in a similar fashion, albeit with a more electronic bend, I think. Best track here is number two, "Calvin," an amazingly melancholic but kind of heartening dirge with beautiful lyrics. 2006 cd on Southern Empire.

Download

Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine ‎– Rampton cd

Not like that this is a rare album but I'm not sure whether it exists in 320 kbps so there you go. TOLRTD (named after the same-titled track by Earth) is a gathering of four mammoths of doom/sludge/drone, Stephen O' Malley and Greg Anderson of Sunn O))) on guitar and bass respectively, Lee Dorrian of Cathedral on vocals, and Justin Greaves of Iron Monkey/Electric Wizard/Crippled Black Phoenix on drums. The result is just mouth-opening. Take the deafening soul-emptying guitar drone of Sunn O))), mix it with the drum torturing strikes of Greaves (of course he is undoubtedly the greatest drummer in the genre) and get Dorrian on top in his one of his best performances ever, singing in a threatening and ominous style, far away from the hippyish shit of late 1990s Cathedral (maybe he was in a heavy doom mood, as Cathedral had just released the crushing Endtyme at that point), and you get an awesome classic of doom/drone. First track is a pun on Queens of The Stone Age's "Feel Good Hit of the Summer" with drug references and all, second track is a top-notch cover of fuckin' Killdozer's "New Pants and Shirt" and track three is an amazing ritual doom classic with church organ and all that borders on Thergothon worship. i used to listen to this as a teenager with my then-girlfriend after sex and the heaviness really emptied any energy that had been left after coming. Isn't all this convincing enough? 2002 cd on Rise Above.

Download

Sun Of Nothing ‎– Rehearsal Tape

Sun Of Nothing is a band from Athens, Greece mixing sludge, post-punk, post-metal and black metal into a cauldron of noise and urban toxic pox. They've released three full-length albums, all of which can be downloaded for free on their bandcamp. This is their first rehearsal tape from 2002, which I was lucky to grab during a gig of them I saw in Thessaloniki when I was doing my university visit there more than a decade ago. What is more striking about them is their vocalist Ilias; his delivery is a shriek that is not exhaled but inhaled; what damage he must have done to his lungs is unknown to me but it sounds great. Think of their music as a mix between Eyehategod and Godflesh; third track also includes the final riff from Electric Wizard's anthem "Funeralopolis" so you know these dudes have good taste. 2002 self-released tape.

Download

Female Borstal (Culver/Mutant Ape/Haikai No Ku project)

As mentioned in the previous post on the Wasp Bomb/Female Borstal split tape, the latter is a project consisting of Lee Stokoe of Culver on bass, George Proctor of Mutant Ape on drums and Jerome Smith of Haikai No Ku on guitar. Their music is sort of a mix between Lee's Marzuraan super-heavy sludge and Jerome's Haikai No Ku psychedelic vastness, something like a more energetic and less sleep-inducing Bong or Let Us Prey-era Electric Wizard (my fave Wizard album btw). The riffs are real nice and there is an epic and agonizing feeling that usually culminates in noisy feedback and echo-drowned jams. Here are some of their releases:

2011 - Female Borstal cdr (Turgid Animal) - Download



2012 - Women In Prison...In Manchester 12.04.12 cdr (Turgid Animal) - Download



Live Split with Drunk In Hell - Free Download

NIHL/Female Borstal split tape on Matching Head - Get it from the label itself - get active!

Komatoz / Counterblast ‎– Live In Berlin in KOPI 15.05.2011 tape

So the guy who made this bootleg tape had to separate one of the Counterblast tracks in both sides of the tape because of the length. Like it must have been very hard to release the whole Counterblast performance on a standalone tape. And as he says in the liner note, the full CB performance can be downloaded online, but the link for his site doesn't exist anymore. Pure idiocy. So, here we have a live Counterblast performance from a 2011 gig in the legendary 28-year-old Berlin squat Køpi, just a few days after the release of their most recent album Nothingness. All tracks are from said album (unfortunately nothing from Balance of Pain or Impassivity), along with "The Bitter End" from the 2010 Faceless 10". The sound quality sucks and worsens as the tape goes on, and for maybe half the duration there's only one speaker functioning. Great job man, couldn't have done better. But hey, still it's fucking Counterblast, one of the best bands in the crust/sludge world, and this rugged quality kinda fits the depression and anger so deeply entrenched in their music, and the keyboards sound especially menacing and oppressive, and the band plays brutally and with an emotional abandon, so we ok. Let's hope that listeners will be able to bear with the sound. On the other side, there's Komatoz, a Russian crust/thrash metal band, that sounds more on the metal than the punk side for my taste. 2011 tape on Kickasstapes.

Download 

Marzuraan - Solid State cd

Can a band that has chosen an Old Lady Drivers song title for their name not be good? Possibly the heaviest doom album to have come out of the UK since Electric Wizard's Come My Fanatics, this features Lee Stokoe and it contains crawling doom/sludge with a lo-fi sound. Whereas the Wizard focused on crushing doom riffs, Marzuraan has a more improvisational bend and noise leanings. There is only one track with vocals, "Death Dirge Has Come," which features one of the scariest vocal performances ever, only comparable with Edgy of Burning Witch and Alan Dubin of Khanate. Plus, nice artwork by Stephen O' Malley. 2004 cd on Traqueto.

Download

Khanate - End: Capture & Release Live DVD

To coincide with the crucifixion of Christ, a 2005 performance of the most hateful and disgusting band ever performing both tracks from their masterpiece. This DVD came together with their last album Clean Hands Go Foul from the Hydrahead webstore.These are the vob files taken straight from the DVD, so expect the best possible quality but also a big size. 2009 dvd on Hydrahead.

Download

Corrupted - Dios Injusto 7"

At the request of a reader, I'm posting one of the best Corrupted releases ever. If there is one trademark Corrupted guitar riff, for me the central riff of "Dios Injusto" is the one, perhaps alongside the main riff of "Paso Inferior." But this one has this serpentine, crawling arpeggiated style that alsois equally heavy sludge and black metally like the demos of Thorns or some of the riffs of "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" Mayhem. The "guitar solo" cacophony on the second side is also just indescribable, while both Hevi and Chew are on top of their game here, the first in his Spanish curses and the second in crushing everything on the drums. 1999 7" on Frigidity Discos (<3 @ the Spanish"discos")

Download

Corrupted - Se Hace Por Los Suenos Asesinos cd

 

Corrupted's third full-length was equally bleak to the previous one. The first track "Gekkou No Daichi" (it would receive an epic revisit in Garten Der Unbewusstheit), is an acoustic doom-western requiem via almost Tibetan chanting and the two other tracks are characteristic Corrupted apocalypse, the latter one featuring a heavily Celtic-Frosted deathly groove. Must listen. 2004 cd on HG Fact.

Download