Give it six months, and I'm gonna find that certain ennui. Submissions form a steaming pile, holiday obligations further tug at my sleeve, and by midnight I'm snarling and struggling to explain that these sounds are my sanity. I know, I KNOW! Scan the queue, pick and choose, draft your praise, close shop, shift back to parenthood. It's maddening. So maddening that I sit with a list of incredible bands and albums that I worry will go unnoticed. We thereby offer the acts you need to hear this Sunday in one setting, course for course matched with slug for slug.
Slug Salt Lava
Three crunched releases find their marquee on
Radiated Soundscapes, a five-track EP of post-everything, essentially dialing pensive, buoyant repetition and stoner-sludge maturity that few young bands can boast. Patience chips and chops at lumbered riffs and the lingering cool buzz finds nostalgia, the oft-rejected (sometimes blistered) hot-mist soulmate so few embrace. Try it. You'll be stunned.
Kurokuma
The overt violence echoes Grizzly and the goof element whispers of Big Dumb Face, but don't be fooled. There's a structured, distant puncture lacing this tandem. Something bigger is happening here, something primitive and unapologetic. Thump, burn, bubble toward a blister... As raw as this is, it's difficult to imagine polished production. Kurokuma mock compromise, hovering under strange, perfect swirls that move neither back nor forward.
Comacozer
This Aussie trio weaves lilted, warped psychedelia and far-East hypnosis, all risen from sonic patches of hot sand. Patient, confident, and at times coated in beautiful filth, this triptych leads us into progressively back-breaking gazes toward monumental marriages of endearment and deception. You won't be able to keep your eyes open or your mouth from gaping.
Monte Resina
The five tracks offered on this EP shoot instrumental stoner sludge without offering a chaser. The quick-trotted fuzz is spiked with drum slugs and driven due South via grunge, groove, and gnarl. Monte Resina snatch victory from the soil, and peering into the clearing only offers brief gasps on this otherwise staggering, nut-dragging smoke stomp through the timber. Fuckin' awesome.
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The Stone Eye
Yet I Feel So Fine is merely a one-track introduction to this Philadelphia duo, and it's a fine one. A sonic duality demonstrating the band's broad scope with a pair of all-too-quick strokes, the divide abandons only to return full-circle. Burning slow-motion rises and falls take us from dirt to cloud, all the while laced with a haunting vocal that somehow never makes us uneasy. Quite the contrary, in fact. This could open or close any Sunday, if you ask me.
