New Band To Burn One To: Goryl

 

A rather different beast to many of the bands we cover here at Heavy Planet, but one none-the-less that falls directly into our musical category. Solo musician Goryl offers us a chance to explore the far reaches of our darkest souls with his heavy ambient drone project, and having recently released an acoustic take on his work, it’s about time that we divulged these dark lonely winter nights shadowing his drawn out growling riffs.

  

His previous two EPs The Father Of Witches and The Father Of Evil Witches offer mesmerizing droned riffs that only his outpouring soul could decipher as he sits hunched over his bass-heavy guitar shredding out cursed, devastating drawn-out riffs that feel like the hand of death upon your shoulder, encompassing and frightening in alliance.  

  

Describing his sound as “A line of poetry written with a splash of blood - a sonic reminder that you will suffer many hardships and adversities, but you will not die until the day appointed for you doom”, Goryl is not to be taken on board without fair warning. His latest release, Snakes, an acoustic EP, offers as much bleak, droning respite as his previous work, which is an impressive feat. The final track on the EP 'Lovely Witches' even offers some hushed whispered vocals which is a welcome respite from his otherwise instrumental music.

  

Goryl’s musical work so far is utterly transfixing, from each lonely desolate pluck of the guitar string to the next downturned soul wrenching note, you find yourself totally overcome with a sense of being, it’s not a sound which uplifts or necessarily makes you think, but rather a sound which keeps you static, aware of the darkness and decay around you, embracing death as much as life itself. 

Goryl is heavy, other-worldly, and vital. 

 

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Sunday Sludge: Deathkings - "Destroyer"

So this vinyl swing had to show up and fuckin' ruin everything, huh? Oh, multiple color schemes, bonus tracks, digital download coupons, limited releases, alternate artwork... I'm guilty of nodding into all this nerdy shit, but I'll never lose sight of the importance of actually immersing myself in the sounds spit from the grooves. Fuck the naysayers, but fuck the purists, too. And c'mon, Mastodon. Seventy clams for a "limited edition" LP?

When LA's ambient sludge-doom foursome Deathkings decided to press their 2011 Destroyer triptych to vinyl, they had to surgicalize it just a bit. That meant splitting the staggering, unsettling Martyrs into two tracks. Strangely, nothing's lost in the transition and both volumes swing with concrete fists. Vol. I proves bulkier, heaving lead repetitively and bloodying as much as it numbs. Sean Spindler's drums are absolutely assaulted, while scraping guitars pit listeners against a wall and stuff their mouths with stones.

The violence never relents and the whole of part one is loaded with abandoned hope. Promise is jarred loose and despite the rhythmic shift toward lifted sounds, we're prepared to re-descend. Vol. II serves an awesome drone hover peppered with drums and crushed by massive doom slabs. The reverberating static tightens to spew sludgy despair that's downright vile. The mud is given time to crust over just until cracks emerge.

The collective thirty minute bookends of Halo Of The Sun and the closing title track are swollen, fragmented journeys into dark, primitive reflection. The opener's despondent atmospheres deliver a collective melancholy that just won't fade, cascading with riffs and chugging toward seasoned, penetrative barks. Bleak static glazes the track, hanging and spreading enough to make us shudder. Slowly burning and sliding toward earthier elements, the progressions are unmoved by the choppy seas ahead. And soothing as they are, the merciful closing chants offer more dread than anything.

Heavy in both form and function is the closing title track, sounding as much like a funeral chant as a backwoods sacrifice. Buzzing through what seems like lifetimes is a boiling angst, spilling until the emergence of a cruel death-rattle. Echoed licks splinter into shards and the swinging doom pendulum marries the very real, sobering vocal. As the Earth scorches, the album delivers on its promises. Wider at each breath and thicker with every lurch, the sludge-doom carry-out is a brilliant, punchy final gasp.

Destroyer lays a low rumble that sits heavy in the chest, never quite making its way out of dense, nebulous cavern. Each of these three tracks is its own journey, none of them leading toward the sun. But cold reality has its place here, and the austere metering is drawn-out just enough to soften the sting. If the promised follow-up is another enduring slug to the back of the head, we welcome it in our swooning trance.

For fans of: Neurosis, Rwake, Sunn O)))
Pair with: Darkness Russian Imperial Stout, Surly Brewing Co.

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LP Review - "Oceans Into Ashes" by Maeth

Maeth are different. Very different are Maeth. They sound like themselves although if a category they must be placed then it'd be post metal, sludge, doom, progressive, heavy metal, ambient, drone and psychedelic etc; for they are all those sounds plus more and often all at once. My jaw rested firmly on the floor while I sat bolt upright staring in a wild gaze at something, I don't recall what, while this incredible noise oozed into my ears and left me feeling cleansing waves of vibration surging up and down my spine.

Maeth follow their brilliant debut "Horse Funeral" with a masterpiece of experimental metal that, if you appreciate such infinite potential metal explorations, will leave you as stunned as I am at what I'm hearing, for the third time today. What Maeth have created with this album is immense in its variety and it contains everything I like to hear all blended together like a master artist does with paint, palate, brush, canvas and easel. "Oceans Into Ashes" is a veritable feast of sound with each metal morsel being as equally sumptuous as the last.

It opens with the 2.5 minute "Prayer" with seagulls, a small motorboat that passes by and gently soothing acoustic guitars that drift into electronic take-off's and then we're taken straight into the triumphant post rock and metalisms of "The Sea In Winter" which hints just a little at the journey that lays ahead.

Then comes "Nomad" which for me was 10 minutes 50 seconds of sheer amazement. This track has everything and everything is played so well and sounds so good that I had some kind of auditory orgasm.
It opens with a feedback drone that leads to soul stirring guitar twangs and a phasing electronic buzz until a bash of snares launches the track into double fist raising metal surges and hugely satisfying post rock finger work. Things suddenly twist into a weird almost prog sludge that boarders on math metal until it morphs into crusty sludge in the style of Downfall of Gaia, Monachus and Fall of Efrafa. Thunderous tribal drums then lead to drifting drones and chaotic and mystical tribal pipes that build an uncomfortable tension towards jagged rhythm'd post metal and eventual heavily crushing doom that ends in pleasant guitar soothings. Phew!

What follows then is an epic journey that will leave you all starry eyed and full of wonder at how life enhancing our united musical preferences are and Maeth celebrate this with an album packed full of the most pleasing of metal in all its many morphing forms. I would only be doing Maeth and this album a disservice if I were to review each track in turn so I urge any that read this to delve into Maeth and be ready for explorations in metal that will leave you stunned. If not then you're not paying attention. "Oceans Into Ashes" is a long album at 11 tracks with 6 of them running close to or over 10 minutes each but at no moment did I lose interest at all in the 3 sittings I have had with it so far today.

This album will definitely be on my best of the year list.

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New Band To Burn One To: VALFADER

HEAVY PLANET presents... VALFADER!

BAND BIO:

Valfader was born in the summer of 2010 at a local drinking hole in Bath and at stage two studios.

Valfader are:

Dean Gaylard - Vocals/lead guitar

Matt Jones - Bass

Gareth Jones - Drums/backup vocals

We're three guys with valved amps, big drums, heavy riffs and appreciate of all things heavy and doomy. We know what we like and we hope that you (the listener) like and enjoy the music too.

THOUGHTS:

"As I return from my vacation and go through an astonishing amount of e-mails, I came across this trio of musicians from Bath, UK. Two e-mails actually. And man am I glad I took the time to listen to this band.  The four songs contained within Valfader's latest album "Whispers of Chaos" is filled with tortured and mystic landscapes which encompass the doom-laden undertones guiding the listener through an ear-thrashing abundance of sonic amazement. The album runs nearly forty minutes, gnawing and twisting through harrowing riffing, seismic drum bashing, and growling vocals all held together by the ominous bass. Even though the music is heavy and aggressive, it has a subtle softness that makes the entire album hypnotic and intriguing. You will not be disappointed after listening to the album closer "Sacred Spiral". Splendid Ambient Doom Metal from these 3 guys from Bath! 

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Sunday Sludge: Sonance - "Like Ghosts"

You'd have a hard time finding a lighthearted American this weekend. Media saturation spills across the pond, so the melancholy is likely hovering over the rest of the world by now. I'm not sure if what we'll hear for today's Sunday Sludge is an antidote to the poison or perhaps a mere extension of the symptom, but there's no denying it's an appropriate and paralleled complement to the mood we've recently had thrust upon us.

I won't contend that a trip with Bristol's Sonance is boiled down to a handful of benzos, but the pharmaceutical effects the band imposes are staggering nonetheless. On Like Ghosts, Sonance broaden the already impossibly expansive metal continuum, utilizing ambient drone to tranquilize listeners between stunning swells and collapses. There's no mold to break, there's simply a tapestry of brilliantly woeful uncertainty, ambient with waves and punitive with walls.

Like Ghosts is like ghosts, but not in a sense of paranormal bumps and whispers. The forty-two minutes on these two tracks breathe and haunt more like an undying memory, surging and waning beyond your wishes. These ghosts are seemingly within you, not around you. You can compartmentalize the chills, but the lucidity is never sealed off. And when you've been lulled to comfort and feel a cool sigh can be enjoyed, you're jarred by descending sludge terror.

That terror is no more immediately evident than on Side A, interrupting a brief hovering swarm. Icy guitar grows poetic, mirroring Slint's tinny Spiderland jabs. Rhythms twist as much as they hammer, with jagged swirls invading every teetering emotion. Tom's vocals cling to Chino's thumbings like drying blood, while Will's tortuous accompaniment sets a landscape of agony that provides no repose. Drone drips as fears are examined with an ambient caution, but the slugs of doom greet that pensive lament. It's devastating and beautiful.

The mood takes center stage on Like Ghosts, but musicianship deserves its moment in the sun. Ben's screwdriven assault on frets is more Alex's violent droog than Thurston's sonic experiment, while the film-score precision on Side B tiptoes with early-hour cold. This is where your bones feel it, Sir. The cackles and windchimes are a sort of harbinger, but for what? Will the fog lift and let the day emerge? Perhaps. But paranoia and bleak gusts follow every sideways glance toward empty fields. Long, incredibly ambiguous, and heady as fuck. Fourteen minutes in, though, doom shakes us from our gorgeous trance and resonates with drift until chiding buoyance clubs us senseless. Sludge atmospheres funnel toward chaos, pushed abruptly and appropriately. Should we expect an end? Sometimes it just happens.

Does isolation hit us as we believe it does? The eyeless, faceless malevolence in waiting is as frightening in thought as it is in presence, so perhaps the isolation shields in any sense. With numbing resonation, these Brits pull at every fear until bones are bare. You're exposed, your fears no longer matter, and the dead air is all you need. Like Ghosts is an album that burrows and lingers long after you've put your head to the pillow. You may find yourself wishing you had the company of lost spirits. These ghosts are much harder to shake.

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Sunday Sludge - HUSH. - "Untitled I"

Feast or famine, they say. Sometimes I've gotta dig deep for that "just right" Sunday Sludge band, due either to a small cache of submissions or perhaps even waking up on the wrong side of Jesus. Then there's the flooded inbox, the geeked-out click-fests, and the futile efforts of consuming as much down-tempo goodness as I can squeeze into that smallest of time windows before a three year-old is pelting my forehead with stone raisins.

Having five or six "ideas" to choose from enables a discerning taste, you might say. Turning to Albany, New York's HUSH. was no challenge this morning, but moving on to next week's band may get thorny. On a strong debut of seven painful and distant nugs of sludgy doom, HUSH. plug a churning rhythm and a cacophony of guitar swells that challenge conformity and what some have deemed "progress." That's right, you've gotta pay attention to the lyrics. Sorry for killing your buzz.

Untitled I is teeming, incendiary stomp saddled with dark and unsettling splices. Where the immediate crush of doom puts us in slo-mo, the lifting, ambitious licks and joint-buckling throwdowns flicker in our oft-empty eyes. The occasional stoner hover serves to expand the aura of despair, namely with the sprawling bass web of Old Bones. Throughout the album, pained acceptance is no match for screaming obscenities at a society chewed up, spit out, and sold back to us in a pristine white box. You thought the sound was heavy? Dissect the message, bro.

The heaviness never drowns out all else, though. Slowed with vintage and distant with confinement, Antlerborn freezes and burns all at once. With wet eyes we look toward the sky, embracing our isolation among "a herd of sheep." Pain ebbs and flows, but that flow is brutal. Knee-stagger tempos, you knew, were gonna return. And we haven't even touched on Charles Cure's delivery. The rattling, tapering howl is the only match for hot guitar spears on Squall. Massive sound is pared to veiled licks and lone, echoed crunches. It gets better with each listen, mate.

Keys provide a false spark of hope on Candles, but the encircling thunder and stagnant beliefs collapse under the weight of a ten-ton sludge drop. You'll enjoy the cool calm, but that brief respite got wiped out with Ryan Strainer's gluey porch treatment drum-stampede, slugging at wet earth as the dual vocal is revisited and perfected. HUSH. can pull back the reins, but it's a mindfuck. The message here is one of renewal, and you'll soon discover the shed skin is harder to pick off than you'd expected.

The disc's back end is perfectly patient, holding awesome suspensions on By Tusk and Talon, a knock on technology's disruption of nature. Stamp a barcode on your forehead and get in line for a bone-shaving, shrieking bout with the shakes. Life hits the brakes quick, and this grinder toils away at a man worn thin by the distant jangle of an approaching collapse. And closing with The Distant Roar of Things to Come finds HUSH. at their lowest and most malevolent. The awesome, smeared malaise sludges through the loss of all that made us human, pointing fingers at a culture that "embraced fantasy and greed and dulled our senses." The swirls of anarchy are juxtaposed with intermittent, melodic pauses. It's gorgeous and woeful all at once.

Don't let yourself get too comfortable. On Untitled I, despair clouds every luxury. Every happiness is whittled and boiled. The sludge-doom truths pique our senses, but the vexed lyricism here serves as effective a weapon. The songs are strongly-structured, the shifts are well-placed. Ultimately, the songs are smart and despondent, truly questioning where we're headed. Blame doesn't need to be assigned because you know you're guilty. I suppose the first step is admitting you've got a problem. The second step is listening to HUSH. The third step is listening to HUSH. again. You see where I'm headed?

Band:

Charles Cure - Vocals

Jordan Cozza - 8 String

Jeff Andrews - 7 String/Vocals

Ryan Strainer - Drums/Keys

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Sunday Sludge: The Canyon Observer - "Chapter II: These Binds Will Set You Free"

As overwhelming as Earth's size can seem, what's devastating is the distance separating countries, people, languages, and ideas. It's staggering to think there are countless corners of the world one will never see or understand. You can call music a universal language all you want, but that's not to say I'm ever gonna know what the scene is like in a place like Ljubljana, Slovenia. Pretend for a moment that you discover your new favorite band, they've blown your fucking mind with their perfect balance of style and substance, their commitment to crafting sound over pressing the flesh. But shit, now comes the realization you may never catch them live because they're not traipsing the states in a dented van and you'll have trouble even finding (or pronouncing) their hometown on a map. Well, for all the depravity the online community holds, at least there's comfort in digital downloads.

That a band as young as Ljubljana's The Canyon Observer (formed in 2011) can craft such sonic devastation on only their second release is stunning. Chapter II: These Binds Will Set You Free is a progressive and conceptual offering committed to the idea that patient acquiescence to that which is primitively and innately frightening is the only true path toward self-realization. Perhaps that's stretching things, given the Slovene tongue is hardly familiar to this ugly American. But the track titles, as adequately revealing as they are, capture the album's theme less than the patient and heavy-handed atmospheres drawn from the four distinct chapters.

Part I: As We Surrender To Lust is initially thick and choppy, spinning a buzzy stop-start dynamic that's as pleasant as it is jarring. The break employs an odd time-signature as TCO trudge toward an unnamed voice mid-chant. Guitars float on wisp and the post-metal sludge drifts to some hot, dark trenches. The most impressive emergence on the track comes in the form of layer after layer of heavy complexities. And just as elements hit the peak of density, those distant chants become judgmental, unsettling reprimands. The bouncing sludge bass line guides this excellent opener through a dark clunk you won't forget.

The slow pluck of Part II: And The Pleasure Of Pain ominously hovers and reminds post-metallers of why the patience of Isis and Neurosis hits just as hard as distortion and abrasion. A distant mist of voices circles, haunting with ambient trances. Imagine pacing a cool cavern littered with stalagmite spires alongside an eerie, yet strangely comforting, vocal companion. When you're this badly burned and blistered, that shrouded guide is all you've got.

I won't use the term accessible, but it's safe to assert Part III: We Can Descend Into The Unknown is more discernible and concrete than Parts I & II. That sounds strange, given the track's doom lean and nuanced guitar pullbacks. Progressively, vocals move from hope-laced toward an incredible wall of agonized observation. TCO become all encompassing and, amazingly, full of warmth. As listeners have drifted, so too have their reservations. A cool, tiny crack has grown into a clean and inviting ascent, mysterious as it is. And this nine-minute exposition wasn't turning down the lights without bringing back that sludgy buzz, fully balanced with sharp licks to juxtapose the thickness. This is where patience, for both artist and audience, is rewarded.

And as the title would suggest, Part IV: And Drift Away is a slow course through sterile, icy progressions. The swirling tin elements are deceptively cathartic; there's a calm within these bursts of chaos before the ultimate doom-metal implosion/ejection. The massive, crushing malevolence is, in its most extreme form, also a sort of acceptance. Everything this album has thus far built and offered is being unrelentingly dismantled, and this crusty death-blow is a numbingly profound coup de grâce.

As you've likely noted, Chapter II strings together its track titles to form "As we surrender to lust and the pleasure of pain, we can descend into the unknown and drift away." That's a bold statement, and an even bolder concept. But the sounds actually stick to the idea even better than the titles. The Canyon Observer will draw you in and chip away at everything familiar. When you're struck by their ability to effectively change the course of your thoughts, you begin to fully sense that they're in control. You've been set out to sea and left with little more than blind faith. But hey... when that's all you've got, you'd better hold tight.

Band:

Gašper Letonja
Miloš Milošević
Matic Babič
Sašo Paljk
Nik Franko

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