Album Review - 'Bless The Earth With Fire' by Allfather

Swift has been the rise of Allfather in the South-East England heavy music scene. Having previously released a 4 track EP ’No Gods. No Masters.' in 2015, they now return with ‘Bless The Earth With Fire’ via Portland’s Static Tension Recordings. Formed on the banks of the Medway delta in Kent, England, Allfather are a dark & brooding 5-piece who’ve been fed intravenously the likes of Eyehategod, High on Fire and drops of East coast hardcore, all to create a lethal dose of their own sludge-metal.

Adopting the slogan "Beards. Metal. Fuck You.” this record is the sound of a band refusing to be pigeon-holed into one style. Instead, fusing grooves and riffs in a way they want... whilst giving you the finger. Yet the songwriting craft manages to not only straddle the world’s of sludge, hardcore, metal and doom, but bring them together in one pissed-off and hairy package.

For a start, these guys love their riffs. There’s plenty to get your teeth into if you like guitar tones that could melt iron. Vocally, Tom Ballard’s ability across the screaming spectrum sits well on-top and adds those moments of energy and raw emotion just when required. And the production captures the heaviness of the band delivering a claustrophobic sense you're in the same room as them... ears ringing and surrounded with a stench of blood and sweat.

For me, Allfather own more menace and originality when they’re exploring the sludgy side of their personality, captured perfectly on slow-groove of ‘The Bloody Noose’ which opens with a signature lead riff setting the tone before stepping up a gear in a foot-stomping mid-section. Again, the opus that is ‘Death, And Hell Followed With Him’ is probably the highlight of the band’s career to date - an 11 minute monster which stretches the band’s sound further into more sludgy-doom territory.

If you like your NOLA-inspired sludge, you couldn’t go wrong checking out ‘Bless The Earth With Fire’. It's apparent Allfather have evolved their sound and have begun to hit their stride with this record. And it's brutal. Fuck you.

Check out the album bonus track 'Blood Red Sunset' below...

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Review: Battalions-Nothing To Lose

Battalions come out full force with some heavy down tuned sludge and serious riffage!

I can't help but feel a heavy N.O.L.A influence listening to this album in the vein of Jimmy Bower, and that is all good with me! (but hailing from the UK I can be totally wrong.)

These 5 lads are well seasoned and compliment each others playing by weaving in and out of riff after riff pummeling you with 8 songs of sonic enjoyment, might I add the song  Deadbeat Dad Beat Dead is one clever title!

Its also nice to see some shorter songs coming out for a change, not that I don't like 40 minute 3 song albums, but I can appreciate a well crafted song inside 4 minutes and Battalions does just this, good songs that keep you wanting more.

Nothing to Lose was recorded by Chris Fielding (Conan) at Skyhammer Studios and if you are a Conan fan then you'll know instantly that this is well mixed and mastered.

It looks like their first run of pre-orders are running out so go get some!

-Jon-

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Sunday Cinema: Slow Southern Steel

Half the bands I love stomp south of the Mason-Dixon line. For all the dribbling of these exhaustive Sunday Sludge posts, I've spent the last few years never succinctly outlining exactly WHY these sounds are distinctly Southern, likely due to geography's shortcomings. The grit and groove of Southern metal is unique, powerful, and impossible to stuff into a box of labels or expectations. Sure, Portland has its place. The Southwest is buzzing with anger and fuzz. Greece, Hungary, and Denmark have all bred incredible sludge acts tattooing the genre's landscape. But let's be fuckin' serious: Sludge metal owes everything to the American Southeast (Texas, we'll let you in, too).

Rwake's Chris Terry has (sort of) finally unveiled Slow Southern Steel, a documentary wholly devoted to a dissection of Southern metal. What sets apart Southern sludge metal? What influenced acts like EYEHATEGOD and Jucifer? And what's with the fuckin' flag of the Confederate States? You'd be surprised. Loaded with booze, beards, and an alarmingly warm dose of unmatched brotherhood, this documentary highlights an under-appreciated musical niche via candid interviews, blunt assertions, and no shortage of flattening live stage footage. If you weren't raised in the South, you won't sound like the South. And they'll know it.

Strong family ties, nostalgia, religion, and unending uphill battles are just a few of Slow Southern Steel's triumphant reveals. This "dirt circuit" survives on familial bonds and realistic expectations. Word o' mouth is more important than social media, and there's no shame in sharing a disco-based rebellion. Beautifully-realized gravel road imagery complements the sounds, the stories, and the impact of a scene so ripe with mutual respect and appreciation that it's damn-near overwhelming. This film perfectly explains the things I can't. I'm just a dude who loves Acid Bath. But this is a film that helps me understand why.


For fans of: Rwake, EYEHATEGOD, Acid Bath, Buzzov-en, Dark Castle, Hank III, Dixie Witch, Down, HAARP, COC, Arson Anthem, Black Tusk, Kylesa, Deadbird, Seahag, Beaten Back to Pure, Alabama Thunderpussy, (the) Melvins, Music Hates You, Outlaw Order, Mastodon, Goatwhore, Soilent Green, Lamb of God, Sourvein, Assjack, Weedeater, ANTiSEEN, Hawg Jaw, Crowbar, Hail! Hornet, Zoroaster, A Hanging, and countless fucking other bands you already love.

Pair with: Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboys, one after another

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Sunday Review: EYEHATEGOD

Two years ago, EYEHATEGOD frontman Mike IX Williams told me he and his band hated the term "sludge." Considering the band has spent two and a half decades pioneering the sound, he can call the shit whatever he wants. What's less ambiguous, however, is the NOLA-branded bootprint ExHxG have left behind during their tenure. The band's self-titled fifth album arrives at the end of a path strewn with bumps, potholes, and fallen bridges. Where lesser bands throw in their towels, EYEHATEGOD collect the fragments, lift their heads, and whiten their bloody knuckles.

The band's first full-length studio release since 2000's Confederacy of Ruined Lives fits snugly within their abrasive discography, offering eleven tracks of distortion, corrosion, and revolt. Long-promised and hotly anticipated, the album delivers to fans a perfect amalgam of tradition and progress. Longtime followers can rejoice that the destitute New Orleans torment hasn't slowed one hair, while anyone experiencing ExHxG for the first time can clear their calendar as they eagerly dissect the band's previous landmark efforts.

Phil Anselmo's production captures the band's truest sounds, navigating between screeches, shifted gears, and endless angst. From the onset of Agitation! Propaganda!, feedback is checkered amid thick, chewy riff-rolls and the late Joey LaCaze's drum flurries. The torrid clip re-emerges on Framed to the Wall, a potent blend of hopelessness and distemper. And when Medicine Noose guns its quick-rolling groove, the abrupt close is hardly noticeable with all the hot ash left in your mouth.

But the slower, swinging, stop-motion grind best signals the band's return. Thickening beneath Mike IX's scourge, Trying to Crack the Hard Dollar sways and grinds with sweaty, twisting coils. Robitussin and Rejection allows the guitars to hang with long sustain, chopping on some of the disc's thickest moments. The muddy grooves do seem to find bright moments of near-clarity, but the South is never more than a whisper away. When the riffs rise, the imminent plunge is that much greater for it. The varied viscosity, you realize, is hardly the point.

Distorted, snarled spoken-word broadcasts introduces Flags and Cities Bound, a seven-minute doom highlight. There's no end to the praise and colorful descriptors I could heap onto this track, one that drags us by our heels and slowly extols grief. Opening on a powerful oration, the columns supporting the song's frame are of the heaviest breed, but the descent under a sooty yellow sky can't hold a dim fucking candle to LaCaze's showcase at track's end. Un-fucking-real.

And I can't help it. That sludge label had to go somewhere. The fat, cumbersome The Age of Bootcamp stays low to the ground and marks the album's best evidence that ExHxG have lost zero steam with regard to either mission, energy, focus, or output. Stopping, starting, spiking at the mid-section, these final breaths grind out until an abrasive and jarring overstimulation in the closing minute. It's exhausting. Which reveals exactly what we'd been hoping: these guys still got it.

The EYEHATEGOD trademarks and trackmarks are all here. That's not the surprise, though. These sounds transcend the decades of abuse, both inflicted and received. They could have been laid to tape in 1988 and they'll still resonate decades from now. Call it a refreshing helping of cold truth or a self-inflicted road to warped relapse. Another in a storied, weathered history of blooze-metal NOLA cocktails, EYEHATEGOD find their mark and fucking nail it.

For fans of: You fuckin' kiddin'?
Pair with: In The Name Of Suffering Black India Pale Ale, Three Floyds Brewing

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