Top Ten Records of 2016: Pete's choices.

Let's dispatch with the pleasantries shall we, the "2016 has been a crap year" boohooing, and let's just do this thing! The one thing that can be said about 2016 is, as ever, that the music has been fucking awesome!

10. MAKE - Pilgrimage Of Loathing

Pilgrimage Of Loathing is a very challenging record, one that covers the fucked up human race and political/scumbag shittyness to a tee. MAKE come at you with as much bile and anger as they can muster, while still carrying the post-rock abstractness to take you to their higher-plain of serenity. It's a challenging listen, but a vital one.

9. Domadora - The Violent Mystical Sukuma

The best Earthless record not to be done by Earthless, and that's a compliment, as the French psychedelic/stoner/rockers play with their sounds rather than just imitate. Some tracks are short balls to the wall riffathons, others 16 minute instrumental epics. An excellent record.

8. Steinsopp - Steinsopp

The "Stoner's Stoner Record" of 2016! With indecipherable vocals sung through a megaphone from a different galaxy, chugging stoner riffs, and songs sending you tripping into the next track, Steinsopp have pulled of something mightily impressive here.

7. Spaceslug - Lemanis

Muffled heavy stoner doom is as claustraphobic as it is freeing, and it is done perfectly here. Spaceslug are so good at biding their time at being heavy, that you don't realise you're being crushed by their riffs until they're already on top of you, pressuring down onto your wind pipe.

6. Swan Valley Heights - Swan Valley Heights

One of the best stoner-rock records of the year. Since way back in January, this record has hit multiple repeats, and it still crushes to this day. I've found it works really well down the gym too!

5. Son Of A Witch - Thrones In The Sky

Thrones In The Sky was released right back in the early stages of the year, and it's finally seeing a release on vinyl at the beginning of 2017, and it's just what these Brazilians deserve as the record is all kinds of heavy-hazy-doomy-psychedelic perfection.

4. Messa - Belfry

Gorgeous paganistic style doom from these Italians with ambient drone undertones. Belfry is utterly spellbinding, in no part down to the haunting vocals of Sara, which flitters between heavy seventies style hard rock to nothing but delicate vocals gliding along the wind. Beautifully crushing!

3.Domkraft - The End Of Electricity

A late comer in the year's releases, but one that's made such an impact that it demand your attention. Loud, heavy riffs, psychedelic touches, pummelling beats, and did I mention those riffs? Awesome tunes from these Swedes and yet more proof that Magnetic Eye records can barely put a foot wrong!

2. Whores. - Gold

After the release of two excellent EPs, anticipation was very high for their debut record, and the Noise merchants did not disappoint, with a record that is as loud as they could possibly go, with riffs heavier and more relentless than before. Gold proved that Whores. are the real deal.

1. Cough - Still They Pray

Hypnotically heavy and perfectly psyched-out, this record has been ever present on my turntable ever since I found it in my local record store. Cough are a band who are continuously improving and growing with each release, and the doom stampede here is a pleasure to accompany every dark gruesome night.

Until next year, wherever you are on the planet, have a HEAVY one! Pete.

In Case You Missed It: Cough/Windhand - Reflection of the Negative

It wasn't all that difficult for me to discover that I'd missed this split from two of Richmond's heaviest exports, because the stench from this kind of filth just grows stronger with age.  Apparently this mold covered masterpiece has been festering and fermenting since its release back in April, so now seems like the perfect time for me to feed it to you good people.  Featuring a single, sickly saga from Cough that clocks in at over eighteen minutes and two equally depressing dirges from Windhand that, when combined, span the same, Reflection of the Negative contains enough disheartening doom to keep you looking nervously over your shoulder for the foreseeable future.   

Let's start with Cough's offering, which is an epic monstrosity called "Athame," appropriately named for the ceremonial dagger used in rituals and witchcraft…in case you were wondering.  Joey Arcaro's colossal drums open this calamity, setting the tempo of a snail's march, before the unmistakably chilling sounds of an organ's grind creep into the mix.  Guitarists David Cisco and Brandon Marcey enter the fray with suffocatingly heavy riffs, as does bassist Parker Chandler (the common link between these two bands) whose ghastly gurgle completes this wretched refrain.  Collectively, Cough lulls you into a coma for the first half of the song's run time and then violently shifts gears by altering the rhythm, adding ample amounts of feedback and distortion that become more ominous as Chandler chants, "the time has come for sacrifice."  The apex of this heinous hymn is reached at around thirteen minutes (appropriately), when the band lurches into a bonafide groove laced with enough wickedness to leave Electric Wizard cowering over in the corner.  You're gonna want to check this one out.   

While just as foreboding, Windhand's contributions to Reflection of the Negative are less gradual, which is simply to say, they get right to the point.  Other than a brief introduction of feedback and reverb from Asechiah Bogdan and Garrett Morris, "Amaranth" boils over immediately when the guitarists' down-tuned riffs combine with the rhythm section of drummer Ryan Wolfe and of course, bassist Parker Chandler, to create a gloriously demented rumble that could easily wake the dead.  Dorthia Cottrell's ethereal vocals emerge as if through a haze created by the band's dense and heavy sound and the resulting amalgam is astounding.  "Shepherd's Crook" is the second track from Windhand, and its both longer, at nearly eleven minutes, and more unsettling than it's predecessor.  Opening with a buzzsaw guitar that drills its way into your conscience, the band eventually settles into an unsettling drone that'll leave you trance-like, until a guitar solo takes shape in the foggy chaos and you latch onto it like a lifeline.  Cottrell's muffled moans reach at you as if from the grave and before you know it, Windhand have you thinking bad, bad thoughts.  This is the sound of doom my friends…dirty, filthy doom.  You should do your best not to miss this one.

(((Cough Facebook|Windhand Facebook|Bandcamp)))

Special Edition-Halloween Doom Recommendations

Since today is Halloween, I thought it would be appropriate to recommend a couple of new Doom metal releases for your listening pleasure. The first release is the new album "Ritual Abuse" by the band Cough. Just by looking at the album cover you can tell that this album spews pure evil. The next album is "Take the Curse" by Ramesses. Be afraid, be very afraid!!


Cough-"Ritual Abuse"

Richmond’s COUGH delivers thoroughly massive, psychedelic doom on their aptly titled Relapse debut ‘Ritual Abuse’. The albums five epic tracks are impenetrable walls of sludge; at points suffocating and claustrophobic, at others warped and hallucinogenic. ‘Ritual Abuse’ is an impressive monolith of sound and volume, and one of the finest moments yet of 21st century doom.

Reviews:

Metal George Pacheco-About.com

"Bringing with them a wealth of unholy and occult atmosphere, Richmond, Virginia’s Cough have made good on their initial promise with Ritual Abuse, their debut for Relapse Records and second full-length overall.

Though it would have been easy for the band to turn on the sludge autopilot and simply wing their way with ground-tuned, ambient riffage, Cough impresses with their ability to actually keep a tempo, whilst of course remaining mercilessly slow in execution.

Thusly, the five rituals contained here never become boring or difficult to traverse, instead engaging the listener actively via the band’s inherent ability to compose active song structures with dark ‘n gloomy melodies lain atop the narrative. Guitarist David Cisco also shoots Ritual Abuse up a few notches with his varied—for this style, anyway—vocal choices, venturing from screaming demonic utterances to a sub-Pentagram wail, akin to if Bobby Liebling were being tortured by a heroin-wielding Pinhead from the Hellraiser films." (Read more...) 

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Andy "Dinger" Beresky-Roadburn

"Lovingly pinched from Stonerrock.com: Were you disappointed with the direction that Electric Wizard took after they released Dopethrone, the album that some consider their finest moment, and perhaps the finest moment in the history of stoner doom? Do you wish they’d gone even farther into sludge and space rock territories with their new lineup?" (Read more...)




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Ramesses-"Take the Curse"

Bristling with malevolence, Ramesses’ crushing grooves induce a hypnotick lethargy: weighed down, beleaguered and enveloped by doom. While the percussion/guitar/bass/vokills set to work on your viscera, your head is forcibly plunged down the rabbit hole and drenched in heavy psychedelia.

Spawned in the bleak woodland of Dorset, England, this three-piece has been disfiguring the innards of its army of devoted listeners since 2003 when original Electric Wizard drummer Mark Greening and guitarist Tim Bagshaw hooked up with Adam Richardson (bass + vox), formerly of Lord of Putrefaction, Spirmyard, and Hexed. In the intervening years, Ramesses have ripped an incurable wound in the metal scene.

Reviews:

Matt Mooring-MetalReview.com

"You know, I would have bet that Ramesses would be a household name for doom fans by now. Mind you, it’s not that I’m not a betting man, it’s just that no one seems to want to take my bets on the prospects for fame of heavy metal bands. Anyway, as I was saying, even ignoring for a moment the issue of quality, a band with two thirds of the revered Electric Wizard should raise a lot of eyebrows just on cred alone. But still Ramesses trudge along, letting loose a steady pulse of albums, EPs and splits on a variety of smaller labels, yet the wider world doesn’t seem to be paying a great deal of attention. Just maybe Take the Curse will be the final piece in the band’s Five Year Plan to break them to a bigger audience, and perhaps even land them on a bigger label that would get their albums on more store shelves." (Read more...)

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JJ Koczen-StonerRock.com

"Quit your day job and sacrifice a lemur, Ramesses have a new album! And a brutal, disgusting slab of doomed madness it is. Titled Take the Curse and released through the band’s own Ritual Productions, the second Ramesses full-length follows 2007’s Misanthropic Alchemy, splits with Unearthly Trance (2009) and Negative Reaction (2004), and two EPs, 2005’s We Will Lead You to Glorious Times and 2009’s Baptism of the Walking Dead, all three tracks from which appear here as well. The Dorset band play the kind of doom your mother warned you about, the kind of doom that you lose friends over, the kind of doom where your woman leaves you because you refuse to trim your beard. The kind of doom where one backpatch just doesn’t seem to cut it. You get the point." (Read more...)




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