Sunday Sludge Bouillabaisse

Call it a departure or call it a cop-out. I'm elbow-deep in sludge metal of every breed. I can't stand upright to start the day without buzzing on an email notification offering a promo, a demo, a sample, a compilation. Thermometers registered around 7°F this morning, so I couldn't care less about a cluttered garage and a low tire. My intent remains to give an honest tug to every great sludge release offering a sniff, but there's so much of it. I'm gonna leave behind the self-indulgent bookends and do my best to limit all the colorful descriptors. Here are just a few sludge releases I'm thankful for in recent weeks:

Bungler - Spinehunt

Loose, noisy sludge from upstate New York. There's a snark in every note, and the dirty South drags us by the hair on violent choral singalongs and groove-thump rhythms. Hitting hard and spitting fast, the struggle to stay warm is no struggle at all. Not to worry, though... Bungler deliver a formula that'll still leave you a tad unsettled.

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Tidal Arms - Tidal Arms

Haunting behind a veiled vocal and incredibly flooring progressions, Tidal Arms present a crunch commonly absent on post-metal. Let in the dark beauty of Mirrorbox or stagger under tempo shifts throughout these ten tracks. Spanning between technical and ethereal, this one's got something for everyone and everything for someone. You.

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Rising - Abominor

A follow-up to 2011's To Solemn Ash, Abominor is heavy on crusted thrash and sand-spitting vocals. More uptempo than its predecessor, there's still no shortage of rolling thunder and underbelly groove. Throughout the trot between these nine tracks is a sooty spray that'll leave you scrubbing your nails. Oh, these Danes burn like fire.

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Black Skies - Circadian Meditations

Two years ago, I fell in love with Black Skies and their dark, swirling, churning On The Wings Of Time. Here they expand their cosmos and stretch their scope, burning six tracks of collective sludge psychedelia. Laid low and aimed high, Circadian Meditations is a tautological mind warp hovering somewhere just out of reach. Crawl through their catalog and broaden your senses.

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Sunday Sludge: Rising - "To Solemn Ash"

Is it safe to say we've all had our fill of Super Bowl XLVI? A perfect counter to today's endless coverage of Tom Brady's good looks and Eli Manning's dopey posturing is Sunday Sludge. Luckily, a great majority of metal fans don't have to suffer the media saturation we experience in the states. In fact, we might conclude Copenhagen's Rising have more fans in Denmark and all of Scandinavia than does the NFL. Regardless, the band's To Solemn Ash is today's best excuse to turn off televisions.

Though the Danish three-piece leaves plenty of thick sludge caked under our nails, Rising's debut album contains excellent elements of thrash, doom, stoner, and even power metal. Where most sludge is driven by rhythms, To Solemn Ash's ten piercing shards are heavy on the riffs and short on disappointment.

From Mausoleum's crusty door-busting entrance to the fat grind that carries home Seven Riders, listeners can hit play with the confidence they'll enjoy all of the disc's forty-seven minutes. The album's opener wastes no time in dropping doom-riffs and quickly laying a low groove. You may wonder how the band isn't from Savannah, given the sticky swamp attributes. But the buzzing tornado of guitar fuzz keeps the influences and comparisons to shallow minimums and allows Rising to establish an identity all their own.

Henrik Hald's bass licks highlight Sea of Basalt, while his vocals (not unlike Ben Ward's) remain gruff and boggy. Fiery riffs and steadily-trotting drums manage to keep up with Hald's low-end on a buzzing, battered mire party. If you listen just beyond the creepy, foggy creekbed of Hunter's Crown, you can almost hear a posse assembling to deliver their own brand of southern justice. Hollow basslines echo, contributing to bouncing, thunderous rhythms shifting in and out of the shoreline's thickness.

Cavernous and remote, Under Callous Wings contains some of the album's grimiest moments. The grainy grind sustains, vocals growl, and the mossy jams ride a mud-skipping mule straight into themes of isolation and abandonment. Jacob Krogholt's licks effectively carry the track upward, but listeners can still count on sweat hitting the soil with crushing repetition.

The grooves and hooks of The Vault stay low and cool as the grind is kept at bay with quicksand guitar solos, varying tempos, and even some dreamy atmospherics. There's an iciness in the sound, perhaps attributable to Jacob Johansen's drumwork (cymbals, specifically). The album's bruiser, Through the Eyes of Catalysis, boasts blistered skin-thumping and immediately leaves knees and elbows rubbed raw. Rising get themselves dirty without haste, while cosmic solos are quick to coat listeners in napalm.

The sludge jam Cohorts Rise is To Solemn Ash's best track, rife with chewy plod and Krogholt's best solo. Slower and more fully-realized than any other song on the album, here Rising prove they can remain effective at a tamed pace. The dual vocal is weathered but perfectly complemented with heavy, otherworldly drums. And the best chaser for incendiary solos is a jammy marriage of riffs and pestled grime.

Speaking of a balance struck between chords and carrion, Seven Riders is Rising's ultimate statement of lightning licks greeting bayou mudslinging. The song breaks up the sludge roll with intermittent, spacy riffs. There's no shortage of distorted buzz, leaving us sun-baked and listless. As the track slows, adopts the true sludge tag, and tries to carry itself home, axes punctuate by stabbing the grind square in the side.

Failing to cloak themselves with any one label has given Rising a safety net from genre traps. They haven't sharpened their sound too finely, though they've pared the excess to near-brilliance. To Solemn Ash is as solid a sludge record as you'll find, but Rising is willing to shed their skin and step away from their comfort zone. Any metal fan can find something to enjoy here. Thick without growing dull, sharp without being shrill. Almost sounds like a beer commercial.



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