LP Review "Scabrous" by Sea Bastard

Sea Bastard from Brighton UK are a doom/sludge quartet who have previously been reviewed on Heavy Planet by the more than capable sludge covered hands of Trash Boat and his Sunday Sludge for their S/T album released a year ago. Since then Sea Bastard have released a live EP entitled "Great Barrier Riff" back in June and they now return with "Scabrous" which was recently released on the blackest day of all, Halloween.

"Scabrous" contains 4 tracks of the bleakest of doom and sludge. It is cold, violent and horrifying and it continues in the same face shredding doom vibrations as their previous output. This is doom and sludge to chew on a rock to, feeling the enamel of your teeth splinter and shatter with every crushing black riff that enters your ears in relentless waves of horrific spite.

The violent pummeling begins with "Nokken", a 17+ minute disgustingly heavy heaving of the blackest of sludged riffs that fall relentlessly upon you with vocals that are at first as bone staining black as the riffs are but soon turn to the wild screeching howls of a hell-spawned mad creature which serves only to twist the doom knife further into your bewildered and petrified face. There are no let ups here. Expect no twee breathers or dark atmospheric ambiance to give some little relief from the onslaught of horrifying doom. The riffs, the vocals, the drum smacks, they keep falling on you, dishing out punishing swathes of obsidian spite the further into the track you go. The final section has the track pick up pace with an unleashing of filthy and distorted guitar seizures and a revolving sludge riff that makes this track darkly psychedelic, like having an heroic dose of 5 dried grams of shrooms only to find yourself trapped in an asylum surrounded by the worst psychopaths known to the human race, and you are their prey, their meal.

The nightmare continues with "Nightmares of the Monolith" that comes in a tumble of urgent riffs and growling vocals that spit pure black venom in a celebratory call to those that dwell deep within the deepest recesses of the doom abyss. Again, there is no time to breath as the sludge consumes you without hesitation as you drown in the blackest pool with the hands of the doom abyss dwellers grabbing you by the ankles and they pull you down and down and down.

From the death of the previous track rises the amusingly named "Door Sniffer" with smouldering feedback, bulbous and crunchy bass chugs and tight incendiary drumming that seems to eke out the promised onslaught of black sludge that inevitably lurches into your already broken brain. This is the shortest of the 4 tracks on this LP running at only 8 minutes and 8 seconds and despite its ever so slightly less bleak than its predecessors' moments in doom, the track devolves and sinks into some of the sickest and blackest bleakness and downright fucking skull-splittingly amazing sludge/doom metal that I have yet heard. Simply put; it slays.

Finally there is the 20:22 track "Metamorphic Possession" with a wobbly twang of hopelessness that brings in a big bluesy bass line that jams along with sparse drumming which makes this short moment in "Scabrous" by far the lightest but soon enough the huge crushing riffs and anguished gravelly howls and pounding drums are bashed out in a merciless battering of violent doom. The track lumbers forward, taking mountainous steps that build to devastating explosions of doom and sludge. The track evolves and morphs and twists its riffs to wring out the thickest and blackest of sludge as it descends ever lower into the black pit of doom.
At the half way point the track decays into seething feedback and we hear the return of the jammed out bass line and the tight but erratic drumming that we heard in the intro. This is only a brief respite before the sludge returns with a gradual slowing and desecration of the riffs that turns the track into a slothenly filthy beast that wallows in a putrid quagmire of frothing sludge until the desecration rots the track down into piercing black feedback.

If you already know Sea Bastard and you are familiar with their wholly negative and violent take on doom and sludge metal then you will know all about the crushing punishment that is on offer with "Scabrous". If you are not yet aware then please prepare yourself by first emptying your bowels pre-listen, hold onto something that makes you feel secure like your childhood teddy bear and then proceed to suck your thumb and tremble and weep with hopeless terror at Sea Bastards relentless and intimidating black riff power.

Hear it, buy it, download it, shit yourself and become spiritually tainted forever now at their Bandcamp where the album is very kindly offered as a name your own price download. Be kind in return.

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Sunday Sludge: In The Company Of Serpents - "Of The Flock"

My wife finally admits that she's heard the footsteps. The footsteps I've heard for years. The footsteps calling into question my sanity, making me sound foolish after a few drinks over open conversation. Let's not chew on the disembodied laughter of children who aren't there or that weird chill that never stays in one place. Right now, let's just put to rest my doubts and acknowledge that there's something here. But maybe we're all fucking crazy.

Trust your instincts? Trust perception? Neither tend to work in my favor. And expectations have never panned out, so walking blindly and avoiding disappointment serves as success. When Denver's In the Company of Serpents debuted on Heavy Planet in 2012, my response was swift and staggered. Pools of fuzz found a grooving doom on their self-titled, setting up camp in the folds of my brain and stoking my swollen heart.

I was branded. The sludge-doom duo cemented their hammy fists among 2012's favorites and a follow-up was promised. But when expectations rose, I had to smother them with a bloodied towel. I couldn't let these dudes burn me like so many others had. By the time the band's sophomore release hit my ears, there was no template and no trail of breadcrumbs. I don't have to compare Of The Flock to their debut and there's no tale of the tape as it laces up against the year's best. But let's pretend I walked in with a crow on my shoulder. These five tracks would melt any expectation and set a new standard. This is a huge step forward from a band already carving their own element.

For all the riffing sludge-doom they deliver, In the Company of Serpents here adopt a more balanced approach by stretching extremes and snagging our black denim on rusty barbs. Immediately evident on four of these five tracks is an acoustic pluck, a swampy smoothness bookending the album with the introductory Ash Swamp and the closing tandem of Untied/Culling Essence from the Void. The lonely pop and hiss of rolling static on the opener sounds like a simpler time, while Untied's cool tiptoe is far more ominous and unsettling.

To say the crash was imminent is celebrating the obvious, but Craven's abrupt lashing singes like a grease fire before peeling back layers of plug and plod. Downtuned sludge swirls with heady fuzz, steadily clubbing bystanders with slow-motion snarls. Listeners are pressed into tight corners, enveloped by this heaving, riff-caked beast. When Blood from Stone gazes into unfolding doom, answers are dismissed and more questions are revealed. Riffs and Myer's thumps work in unison for a soggy sweep of the senses, but the buzz you felt is growing to a sting. Grant Netzorg's bellow has deepened and broadened it's target, while the band's aim has steadied through patience. Exploding into a steady patch of surprise, the track surges, spitting hot ash and rising only to repeatedly plunge downward.

The disc's title track finds the band's pinnacle, peppering dense riffs and summoning a smoke cloud with repeated, passioned stomps. Evolving from southern resonance into booming sludge, you'd expect (there's that word again) the trudge to hit the dirt. You'll lose direction when the burnt-finger licks separate themselves to flare rather than flatten. It's not all bone-shaking, chest-caving galumph. In every sense, this track (and the album as a whole), abandons the predecessor while managing to build on its foundations.

The moody, mournful stew of hard hits on Untied/Culling Essence from the Void is mired in stoner repetition. Avalanches of sound drop from every mountaintop, and the groove results more from controlled command than any buoyant optimism. No jaw is spared by the full scope of devastation, and In the Company of Serpents lace thick tones with endlessly proficient songcraft.

Whatever crafted these sounds, whatever's behind the curtain is hardly important. Interpret these songs from any angle and you'll find one of 2013's heaviest hitters. Of The Flock breathes with confidence, calmly composing itself between lumbering bricks of sludge. The transitions and departures are smoother than they have any right to be, and the separation from their predecessors and contemporaries has never been more evident. Among countless cloned sheep, this wolf is simply too exceptional to blend in.

For fans of: Sleep, Electric Wizard, Black Sabbath
Pair with: Third Coast Old Ale, Bell's Brewery

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