LP Review: Shrooming Widow by Void Commander

As a great big fat choking smoke cloud descends upon you, filling your lungs with a dense clogging clawing, commanding every gap and hole it finds, becoming one with you, you manage to exhale within the last gasping inch of breath you've got left, right before the next fuzzed-up doom riff smothers you again. It's as glorious as it is suffocating, and Void Commander pummel you in droves with one dense heavy riff after the next. It's not a record for the faint-hearted.

Hailing from "the dark forests" of Sweden, the trio of Bobby K, Linus O, and Jimmy J have released their debut full-length record of heavy HEAVY stoner doom distorted psychedelic riffs in the mammoth Shrooming Widow, and it's fits perfectly between Sleep and Spaceslug on the drifting-alone-in-outer-space-high-as-fuck-being-pulled-apart-by-a-black-hole noise spectrum: so you can see why we love it.

With tracks like, well, every damn track here, but in particular '2061' reaching such earthly decimals to rupture your eardrums, and make you nauseas from the pounding drumming and doom-chainsaw guitar work, you find yourself constantly caught between banging your head 'til death and riding that magical carpet into the higher plains of your existential mind. When one mind mulching track ends, another starts up right where they left off, 'Acid Queen' continues the powerful dooming riffs setting the stoner tempo as high as they dare to go. The instrumental bass heavy 'Tongue Whip of the Alien Mothership' is the marker that separates the pretenders from the real lovers of all that is HEAVY as the record continues for another ten songs of the same smothering riffs in glorious succession.

'Days Will Pass and Years Will Die' is our standout track on Shrooming Widow, with Bobby K's haunting vocals tripping over the top of some of the sharpest riffs the band have to offer. The song encompasses everything the band are about, with their psychedelic tinged astral riffs, crushing doom-laden bass riffs and drumming, and droning, continuous drug-fuelled riffs (they have a lot of riffs) all within the same glorious 8-minute wonder.

Shrooming Widow is an excellent debut record from a band that we're certain to hear a lot more from for years to come, if our eardrums can honestly handle it.

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LP Review: Codex Narco by Godhunter

Now this is a fucking powerful record!

Godhunter, from Arizona, Tucson, have been producing stoner sludge for a number of years now, and when several members of the band left at the end of 2015, it seemed like the band's days were numbered, however, guitarist/vocalist David Rodgers, drummer Andy Kratzenberg, and keyboardist Matthew Davis continued on writing new music, changing from their ever present commentary on social injustice to taking a more personal approach and focusing on their own individual struggles, and it's made for a short but stunning new record, combining elements of doom, sludge, post-metal, industrial, and stoner to the perfect degree.

Codex Narco opens with 'A Dread of Some Strange Impending Doom', a two-minute doom opus, setting the tone as a bleak but charging expedition into the band's consciousness, putting you at an unsettling ease before the dark psychedelic stomping riffs of 'Like Glass Under Black Fingernails' hits you with it's doomy gutteral atmospheric ambiance. The vocals are a perfect juxtaposition of gentle heart-wrenching clean aches and aggressive power as the two singers vie for the most poignant delivery. The music is as bleak as it is powerful, and it grips you.

'Our Blood Is Poison' is a dark audio recording that sends a few shivers down your spine before the excellent 'Cocaine Witches & Lysergic Dreams' gives you a glorious wall of noise, dealing with issues of cocaine use shouting "The high isn't forever, and neither is this, the song is just as temporary as the fix" as the industrial stoner doom backdrop drives the music along with incredible power and force. It's a song not to be fucked with.

The band have recruited members of CHRCH, Mountaineer, Demon Lung, Methra, and Thorne to play on this record, and they've impressed to make Codex Narco a short but brilliantly powerful record, a one which even a cover of Tegan and Sara's 'Walking With a Ghost' fits in perfectly. Godhunter have produced a massive sound on a small scale, and it's impact is as heartfelt as it is speaker shattering. Available on cassette from Baby Tooth records, and digitally, we recommend you get this now.

All proceeds from the record go to Planned Parenthood.

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LP Review: Relic by Forming the Void

The artwork to Forming the Void's second release depicts a cloaked figure carrying a trident, riding a harnessed piece of earth with a chain of other rocks through the cosmos with a hawk by it's side; it's dark, psychedelic, and perfectly encaptures the slow driving riffs that this Louisiana band deliver with a blunt knife to the temple.

Opening track 'After Earth' slowly picks you up on a dust cloud, sailing through the atmosphere of hazy drones and soothing guitar picks before delivering it's crushing blow of stoner/doom riffs like a creeping tsunami. The vocals of James Marshall are really refreshing to listen to as they avoid the typical stoneresqe gruff shouting vocals, but instead have a more 90's grunge tone to them as the guitars chug away in the background to a pulsating beat. The band lay the doom ethic on as thick as they do the crushing stoner,and it's a combination which is all encompassing, at times soaring with touches of psychedelia, and others the slowest of doom.

'The Endless Road' has similarities with bands like Sergeant Thunderhoof, with thick layers of crushing riffs building upon progressive musicianship with becomes quite captivating to listen to. 'Bialozar' is straight up powering stoner metal with attitude and we just cannot stop throwing fists at the fuzzy guitar riffs with smiles on our stupid faces. Forming the Void aren't necessarily breaking boundaries with their music, but they are doing the best possible versions of their genre that they could hope for.

The rest of the record simple continues to just fucking destroy you, with each pulverising guitar riff of 'Relic', the psychedelic hammering of 'The Witch', and the menacing doom of 'Unto the Smoke', all beating you black and blue, just so they can soothe you with an absolutely killer version of Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir' to close the record, seriously, you've got to hear this track! Relic is a superb stoner/metal/doom record which will be getting many many many a repeated listen at Heavy Planet HQ. Go and listen and tell us how right we are.

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LP Review: Let It Burn by REZN

Now this is just what we needed! It's been a pretty slow start to the beginning of 2017 for us guys at HP, we needed a bit of a wake up call to get our arses into gear, and it turns out that an almighty heavy slab of cosmic doom will do just the trick! Enter Chicago's REZN.

Coming across like a psychedelic Electric Wizard, REZN are making a huge noise on their debut full-length record; the guitars are tuned to their fuzzy maximum while the drums echo from the gut and the vocals drone into a tripped out phenomena. Opening track 'Relax' doesn't fuck about, and begins to pummel your senses from the start with its chugging stoner/doom riffs creating a wall of sound that will crush weaker individuals. Everything about REZN's sound is massive, the drum kit must need replacing after each set the way Patrick Dunn pounds away, but then at the flick of a switch they create delicate tripped out moments of hazy clarity, before you fall out of the sky and hit the ground with the massive riffs.

'Wake' creeps along like a Black Sabbath song that was dropped for being a bit too heavy, with lots of trippy vocals and bass lines that'll make you not even need those drugs to reach your astral plain of consciousness. But even in their quieter moments they can't stop themselves from being heavy as hell as the riffs and cymbals come crashing down once again. 'Dread' is the calm amongst the ongoing storm, a short instrumental moment of reflection on the havoc that has been caused so far. 'Rezurrection' comes across with elements of a Far Eastern space trip, standing the hairs on your neck on high as the band take you under their spell.

Let It Burn is an hour's worth of extraordinarily heavy cosmic doom that dips its toes into a lot of stoner and psychedelic elements with spectacular results. It crushes your soul, and that's all we can really ask for.

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LP Review: Feed The Rats by Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs

Ever since catching these guys headline at the Cluny venue in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England, towards the end of last year, we’ve been waiting for this record to drop, and by god how mightily it crashes to earth; psychedelic stoner riffs, earthly pounding drums, and vocals at their rawest, Feed The Rats is a hell of a statement from Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs that we’ve had on repeat for a good month now (hence the delayed review).

Pigs(x7) are a band containing members of other North Eastern England bands such as the fantastic Blown Out, Ommadon, and Khunnt, and the musical dexterity is expressed vividly on opening track ‘Psychopomp’, a 15 minute headfuck of thrusting riffs and psychedelic nuances that keep you gripped to the songs’ core base of being a heavy-ass rock song. The pace never falters, dips, or stops for a breather as the drums pound from the first note to last, the guitar riffs are heavy and dream like, while the vocals of Matthew Baty constantly toe the line between a man possessed and about to lose his voice, to sheer anger.

After the mammoth opener, the band create the “normal” length ‘Sweet Relief’ which is pure heavy stoner majesty. Same pounding drums, heavy riffs, agonising vocals, condensed under five minutes, you know it’s a monstrous song when it tightens its grip on your windpipe until you start turning blue. Feed the Rats is only three tracks long, but with the 1st and 3rd tracks hitting over 30 minutes combined, it’s a fair amount, especially when the colossus of ‘Icon’ begins to slay away at your speakers, what little energy remains in you quickly gets burned up in the smoke haze filled waves of purple and green that spin towards you with every word and riff Pigs(x7) layer on top of the last. 

The band are all the good kinds of claustrophobic, the good kinds of sweaty sleaze, the highs from the drugs, the ringing from the burst ear drums, and the blood from your broken nose. Many people will have said this before of the band, and many will to come, but, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes!

(Oh, and that's some sweet ass artwork too! The vinyl comes as a die-cut and the coloured insert is inter-changeable with the figure on the front)

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LP Review: Pilgrimage of Loathing by MAKE

Only a year on from the release of one of our favourite records of 2015, North Carolina’s MAKE have released another album to make us stop what we’re doing and check how many superlatives we can fit into a short review, because these guys have gone one better than last year’s The Golden Veil, and created a record which is gonna really screw with your senses, and what’s better this time round is quite a menacing thing: MAKE are fucking angry!

The record opens with a slowly built follow on from last year’s release, before the sheer wall of noise hits you as ‘The Somnambulist’ hits you with what MAKE are all about this time round; musical stylings that flicker between beautiful atmospherics, and harsh dark doom that flows with anger and discontent with the society around them. But one of the stunning things about this band is that like a flick of the switch, they can turn the sound into a chanting like state of pleasure without losing any of their flow, never letting the listener settle for a moment, knowing what will come next. ‘Birthed Into A Grave They Made For You’ gets a little more deathly with the vocals, while the sludging riffs and war chant drumming makes your blood boil, echoing MAKE’s own disgust and vengeance. It’s a glorious aggression!

The astral plain style playing is there though, with the poetically named ‘Two Hawks Fucking’ sending psychedelic post-rock vibes reverberating through the speakers, the aftermath of the siege that came before it, right before ‘Human Garbage’ pins you down and continues to relentlessly punish any sort of sensitivity you had left. Their cover of The Stooges’ ‘Dirt’ is as Iggy would have sounded if a diet of doom, pain, blackness, demonic chants, and religious hypocrisy were his staple diet on a daily basis, and it is on point! It would be close to being an album highlight if it were possible to dissect the record into individual songs, and not viewed as a whole, as that is what is necessary with MAKE record; listened to as full records, all the way through, repeatedly.

It has been quite a journey listening to MAKE progress and develop through the years as a band, from Trephine to last year’s stunning The Golden Veil, to their latest spectacular effort, Pilgrimage of Loathing, we have become engrained in the band, willing them to achieve greater things with each effort, and they’re not disappointing. Their sound is combining all the elements that they’ve been teasing with in the past, the sludge/black metal scowls, the ethereal riffs from both hellish and tranquil plains of existence, and soundscapes that challenge the ears, toeing the lines between post-rock/metal, black metal, sludge, and good ol’ heavy rock, MAKE have seriously mastered their craft!

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LP Review: Thunderchief by Shotgun Sawyer

Previously going by the name of Thunderchief (now the name of their record), the newly named Shotgun Sawyer have released a debut full-length record that’s filled with heavy blues and fuzzy riffs to get everyone off their ass and moving to their beat.

The Californian trio open things up fairly lightly (compared to the rest of the record at least) with the raw riffing of ‘Skinwalker’ letting you roughly know what to expect from these guys; bluesy twangs at a rock’n’roll swaggering pace, but the band like to go heavier, and it’s with tracks such as the angry fuzz of ‘Sudden Death in the Flesh’ mixing juggernaut drumming over heavy riffs and clear impassioned vocals that pricks up your ears and has you jigging around the room before you realise it. The band have a lot of range and power in their work, just take a listen to ‘Lawman’, the gentle country-style guitar picking eases you along before the heavy fuzz riffs bust your face in two with its power. These guys are great musicians.

The vocals of Dylan Jarman are one of the things that set Shotgun Sawyer apart from their fellow blues rockers, yes OK the riffs are also heavier and the drumming is relentless (in the best kind of way), but when the clear vocals filled with a sharp passion, and an aching for a better way of life, hit the speakers, they connect with you on a sonic level that outweighs any other band in this genre at the moment. For a blues record, Thunderchief is a lot of fun, from the self-depreciating ‘I’m a Bad Man’, the tribute to the mystery that is ‘Gravedigger Dan’, the delta blues riffs of the ptsd chills on ‘Soldier Song’, the punk ethos on ‘Left For Dead’, to the all-out heavy blues of ‘Strawberry Jam’, Thunderchief is guaranteed to have you at your funky best wherever your dancefloor may be!

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LP Review: Way of the Hoof by Boudain

Three years on from the release of their debut EP (read our review here), the Louisiana grooving stoner four-piece Boudain have finally released their debut full-length (they formed 10 years ago after all). Has Way of the Hoof been worth the decade long wait? You bet your damn ass it has!

The record opens with swathes of thick, gravy-like riffs, treading a line of what Fu Manchu would sound like if they listened to a bit more metal. ‘Sleazy Feats’ is bursting with riffs that the band can barely contain in its four minutes of stoner grooves that begs you to get down and dirty amongst it all, as in the soil and fumes dirt! Flicking between stoner groove, to metal groove, to a bluesy groove, with added doom groove, you can guess how funky this record will make you. The riffs of ‘Neptune’ is a glorious homage to every stoner band that has ever ripped you a new one since you’ve gotten this cool, the vocals are scorched and impassioned that leave no room for fucking about with. The heavy Southern influence kicks in on 'CODA' (Fu Manchu meets Down?) as the riffage becomes a glorious claustrophobic mallet to the face. Boudain wear their influences proudly on their sleeves with every pluck, hit, head-bang and droplet of sweat in everything they do, and it’s a pleasure to get involved amongst it all.

Way of the Hoof is just full of fun and full-throttle riffs, in particular on ‘First Class’ where they never let up for a moment, pure adrenaline guitar work. ‘The Mighty Turn Around’ has doom riffs that threaten to topple over and crush you, before the excellent ‘Disco Jimmy’ and ‘Godzilla’ close the record with thunderous god like riffing that clench the fist and shout “HELL YEAH”!!

Way of the Hoof is such a fun, pummelling record that it becomes an escape to listen to. These types of records are few and far between. Grab a hold, now!

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