Heavy Planet's Top 20 of 2010: #5 to #1

Well, as you have anxiously been anticipating, here are my Top 5 albums of 2010. At this time I would also like to wish everyone a Happy New Year and look forward to hearing some great new music in the upcoming new year.

#05. Ramesses-Take the Curse (Ritual Productions)

I couldn't wait for this album to come out, and after listening to it through the first time I had no doubt that it would be a perfect fit in my Top 10. Unfortunately, there were four other albums that hit me a bit harder than this fine release, otherwise it would have been ranked higher.

What others had to say:

Mike Kemp, (Rocksound.tv)

"Hailing from the darkest depths of Dorset and featuring the original Electric Wizard rhythm section, Ramesses don’t piss about when it comes to delivering weighty slabs of pure, malignant doom. Their second full-length, ‘Take The Curse’ is as dark and claustrophobic as they come, bursting at the seams with massive sludge riffs and enjoyably camp soundbites from 70s horror flicks. The production is appropriately dank and musty, adding an extra layer of unpleasantness to numbers like ‘Black Hash Mass’ and ‘Baptism Of The Walking Dead’, the latter sounding like an Autopsy record spinning at the wrong speed. Doom the fuck out."

Doommantia.com

"I first heard the tracks off "Take The Curse" almost a year ago now when a friend sent me their CDR promo that was circulating at the time, it was such a killer collection of songs that i lent out the disc to another so called friend and never saw the CD or that dude ever again! Finally after nearly a year of waiting i have the album back again and it was worth the wait. Released on the Ritual Productions label, it is due for a official release on April 19th. The CD comes in 2 alternative covers with glossy artwork and the first 200 copies comes with a exclusive limited edition collector's art card set, made especially for this release. What is remarkable about Ramesses is they have become a big influence to a lot of bands but have only ever released one previous full length album which was "Misanthropic Alchemy" released in 2007. They have released a couple of split albums with other bands and a couple of EP's including last years brilliant "Baptism of the Walking Dead". The power doom-trio have a originality that is hard to compare with anyone else which is the band's strongest point and on "Take The Curse", they have taken their sound to the next level of sonic extremes and accessibility." Read more...

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#04. U.S. Christmas-Run Thick in the Night (Neurot)

After the release of their brilliant 2008 release "Eat the Low Dogs", I did not believe that album could be surpassed. On "Run Thick In The Night", the band continues to explore the boundaries of music: dark, brooding, spacey, trippy, chilling or whatever you want to call it, USX simply puts out some truly phenomenal music. I think they just might be one of my new favorite bands!

What others had to say:

Evan, SwanFungus.com

"A few months ago one of my friends was hanging out at South By Southwest (you all know how I feel about that shit, my friend is lucky I still speak to him), and I made him promise me that he would check out U.S. Christmas. I think they were playing a Neurot showcase. I don’t remember. He sent me a text mid-way through their set saying that the band’s percussionist was frying on mushrooms, and that the band sounded incredible. For the first time in my life, I was actually jealous of somebody at SXSW. I guess there is a first for everything." Read more...

Jon Neudorf, Sea of Tranquility.org

"Purveyors of Hawkwind and early Floyd should be interested in Run Thick In The Night, the new album from space/psych rockers US Christmas. It is their fifth release to date and the follow up to Eat The Low Dogs. US Christmas has been around for about ten years but I have to admit this is the first time I have come across the band's music. Band members include Nate Hall (words, voice, slide, electric and acoustic guitar), Matt Johnson (electric guitar, synthesizers), Meghan Mulhearn (violin, voice), Josh Holt (bass, drones, synthesizers), BJ Graves (drums, percussion), Justin Whitlow (drums, controlled feedback) and Chris Thomas (guitar, bass)." Read more... 
 
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#03. Ufomammut-Eve (Supernatural Cat)
 
 

Usually I am not really into the critically aclaimed albums because frankly I just don't understand what all the hype is about but this album is worth all the hype. It is a tremendous result of how well an album can be constructed. If you have never heard anything by this band, Eve is a great place to start.

What others had to say:

Matt Mooring, MetalReview.com

"“Ufomammut are gonna make a big splash with this album."

Seems like I’ve been saying that since 2004, when I first heard Snailking. But for whatever reason, these Italians still seem to be flying under the radar of most doom fans. Maybe it’s their peculiar moniker or the fact that you may have to search a bit to find their releases. But really, there’s no good reason that the doom faithful would miss out on a band capable of chest rattling riffery worthy of Electric Wizard, the hypnotic incantations of Om, and ensnaring ambient intensity of Neurosis and Isis. Of course, Ufomammut don’t actually sound like any of these bands. They don’t actually sound like ANY band. But the trio have honed their attack, forging their own lethal brand of psychedelic doom, and Eve may well be their finest hour." Read more...

Deafsparrow.com

"The line between art and entertainment is totally blurred with Eve, the sixth recording of Italian psyche-doomsters Ufomammut. This new offering is a slow burn and as such, it may require too much from the average listener to enjoy. Others, wiser, more patient and with more sophisticated taste will realize that even though this is best consumed in one sitting it may take several listens to discover and get engaged by the hidden grooves and the slow ascensions presented here. For most, Eve may be too artsy. Hence, not entertaining, nor rocking enough. For others, most already familiar with Ufomammut’s past works, this will be a trip worth ingesting and digesting." Read more... 
 
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#02. Droids Attack-Must Destroy (Crustacean Records)

After the release of Droids Attack's previous effort Fatal/Error, I didn't think the band could get any better, man was I wrong. Although the band incorporates some pretty silly lyrics into their music, I could seriously care less. I just want to fuckin' rock, man and these guys do not hold anything back. This album cured my urge for some serious classic stoner rock riffage with a dash of punk thrown in for good measure.

What others had to say:

Jay Snider, (HellRide.com)

"You’re not likely to get more bluesy riffs and swagger on any other album this year. Droids Attack have again pushed all the right buttons, when it comes to my love for big, classy riffs and Must Destroy will probably end up on my next, horribly disfigured “year end best of list” as a result of their groovy prowess."

DeafSparrow.com

"Life’s not fair, you know. While most bands spend all their years in existence trying to write one good song and a not so sizeable portion of others manage to do so and live off it, others, like Droids Attack, make it seem so easy and write whole albums of high quality chutzpah and high energy music. What’s more infuriating, they make it seem like a joke. A good joke. I mean, they have a song called "The Unforgiven 4" for chrissakes! Taking a look at the digipack you can tell these droids aren’t about getting deep and making you think sad thoughts. Yeah, they may be dressed as soldiers in the second world war but that robot mascot – named Robo – is beyond cute and apparently he is an enlisted stoner fanatic too" Read more...

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#01. Barn Burner-Bangers (Metal Blade)

While not critically acclaimed, the album gained some pretty decent reviews. This album was one of the first releases of the year and I just couldn't get enough of it. It is just one of those albums that gets your blood flowing. The band deemed themselves “the 3 headed love child of Iron Maiden, Thin Lizzy and Fu Manchu“. A pretty accurate statement I must say. I also hear a little C.O.C. influence in there as well. After reading that statement I knew it would have to be great.

What others had to say:

OneMetal.com

"Montreal, Canada-based 4-headed riff machine Barn Burner don’t believe in beating around the bush. Album opener ‘Holy Smokes’ comes roaring out of the gate with a direct aggressiveness that lays out the band’s stall in no uncertain terms – no atmospheric intro, no acoustic lead-in, hell, there’s not even a hi-hat four count – from the second you press play, you’re blasted by guitars, bass and drums in full hell-for-burnished-leather mode. Self-described as “the 3 headed love child of Iron Maiden, Thin Lizzy and Fu Manchu“, the band’s commitment to dirty, sleazy riffage mingled with a punkish rawness and a hard-partying attitude is undisputable. The fifth track, ‘Runnin Reds’, in particular sounds like it could slot neatly onto Black Flag‘s Damaged II album, while mid-album 6:38 epic ‘Brohemoth’ showcases a more thunderous, mid-paced side of the band’s musicianship, barrelling along on crashing, discordant riffage and downtuned stomp." Read more...

The Klepto

"It's easy to write a lot about a band that is bad, or a band that has lots of ups and downs, but for the acts that are solid throughout, unless you listen to the album repeatedly - enough to fully digest it's complexities - then it is damn difficult to make a decent article about it. Barn Burner is one of those acts. Their debut (I believe) album, Bangers, is a solid rendition of rockin' and groovin' stoner metal. They play the blues-tinged, funk-riddled style of the genre which is my favorite. Every song - while great - sounds similar to the one previous and the one after, there is no way to pick the stand-outs, no song falls behind either, all are of the same caliber, all of them rock!" Read more...
 
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Honorable mentions:
 
Kylesa-Static Tensions
Monster Magnet-Mastermind
Venomin James-Crowe Valley Blues
Fatso Jetson-Archaic Volumes
Yawning Man-Nomadic Pursuits
Brant Bjork-Gods & Goddesses
Dax Riggs-Say Goodnight To The World
Loimann-Towards Higher Consciousness

Read #20-#16 here
Read #15-#11 here
Read #10-#06 here

Special Edition-Halloween Doom Recommendations

Since today is Halloween, I thought it would be appropriate to recommend a couple of new Doom metal releases for your listening pleasure. The first release is the new album "Ritual Abuse" by the band Cough. Just by looking at the album cover you can tell that this album spews pure evil. The next album is "Take the Curse" by Ramesses. Be afraid, be very afraid!!


Cough-"Ritual Abuse"

Richmond’s COUGH delivers thoroughly massive, psychedelic doom on their aptly titled Relapse debut ‘Ritual Abuse’. The albums five epic tracks are impenetrable walls of sludge; at points suffocating and claustrophobic, at others warped and hallucinogenic. ‘Ritual Abuse’ is an impressive monolith of sound and volume, and one of the finest moments yet of 21st century doom.

Reviews:

Metal George Pacheco-About.com

"Bringing with them a wealth of unholy and occult atmosphere, Richmond, Virginia’s Cough have made good on their initial promise with Ritual Abuse, their debut for Relapse Records and second full-length overall.

Though it would have been easy for the band to turn on the sludge autopilot and simply wing their way with ground-tuned, ambient riffage, Cough impresses with their ability to actually keep a tempo, whilst of course remaining mercilessly slow in execution.

Thusly, the five rituals contained here never become boring or difficult to traverse, instead engaging the listener actively via the band’s inherent ability to compose active song structures with dark ‘n gloomy melodies lain atop the narrative. Guitarist David Cisco also shoots Ritual Abuse up a few notches with his varied—for this style, anyway—vocal choices, venturing from screaming demonic utterances to a sub-Pentagram wail, akin to if Bobby Liebling were being tortured by a heroin-wielding Pinhead from the Hellraiser films." (Read more...) 

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Andy "Dinger" Beresky-Roadburn

"Lovingly pinched from Stonerrock.com: Were you disappointed with the direction that Electric Wizard took after they released Dopethrone, the album that some consider their finest moment, and perhaps the finest moment in the history of stoner doom? Do you wish they’d gone even farther into sludge and space rock territories with their new lineup?" (Read more...)




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Ramesses-"Take the Curse"

Bristling with malevolence, Ramesses’ crushing grooves induce a hypnotick lethargy: weighed down, beleaguered and enveloped by doom. While the percussion/guitar/bass/vokills set to work on your viscera, your head is forcibly plunged down the rabbit hole and drenched in heavy psychedelia.

Spawned in the bleak woodland of Dorset, England, this three-piece has been disfiguring the innards of its army of devoted listeners since 2003 when original Electric Wizard drummer Mark Greening and guitarist Tim Bagshaw hooked up with Adam Richardson (bass + vox), formerly of Lord of Putrefaction, Spirmyard, and Hexed. In the intervening years, Ramesses have ripped an incurable wound in the metal scene.

Reviews:

Matt Mooring-MetalReview.com

"You know, I would have bet that Ramesses would be a household name for doom fans by now. Mind you, it’s not that I’m not a betting man, it’s just that no one seems to want to take my bets on the prospects for fame of heavy metal bands. Anyway, as I was saying, even ignoring for a moment the issue of quality, a band with two thirds of the revered Electric Wizard should raise a lot of eyebrows just on cred alone. But still Ramesses trudge along, letting loose a steady pulse of albums, EPs and splits on a variety of smaller labels, yet the wider world doesn’t seem to be paying a great deal of attention. Just maybe Take the Curse will be the final piece in the band’s Five Year Plan to break them to a bigger audience, and perhaps even land them on a bigger label that would get their albums on more store shelves." (Read more...)

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JJ Koczen-StonerRock.com

"Quit your day job and sacrifice a lemur, Ramesses have a new album! And a brutal, disgusting slab of doomed madness it is. Titled Take the Curse and released through the band’s own Ritual Productions, the second Ramesses full-length follows 2007’s Misanthropic Alchemy, splits with Unearthly Trance (2009) and Negative Reaction (2004), and two EPs, 2005’s We Will Lead You to Glorious Times and 2009’s Baptism of the Walking Dead, all three tracks from which appear here as well. The Dorset band play the kind of doom your mother warned you about, the kind of doom that you lose friends over, the kind of doom where your woman leaves you because you refuse to trim your beard. The kind of doom where one backpatch just doesn’t seem to cut it. You get the point." (Read more...)




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Upcoming Ramesses Shows

RAMESSES will be playing the following gigs:

April 15: Manchester, UK - Star & Garter
April 16: Newcastle, UK - Trillians
April 17: Glasgow, UK - 13th Note
April 18: Birmingham, UK - BUSK
April 19:- London, UK – Underworld

The band still has copies of their Misanthopic Alchemy 2x12" LP, which will be available while they last at these shows.

Album Of The Week-Ramesses-"We Will Lead You To Glorious Times" (2004)

The Album Of The Week is "We Will Lead You to Glorious Times" by Ramesses.



Reviews:

"When Tim Bagshaw and Mark Greening abandoned ship a couple years ago and went on to form Ramesses, it looked like the doom giant Electric Wizard was, well, doomed. Electric Wizard did of course manage to put together a new line up and release last year’s strong effort, We Live, and now Ramesses has followed suit. So rather than lamenting what looked to be an end of one band, doom fans can enjoy the reincarnation of that band and the genesis of a new one. Bagshaw has discarded the bass in favor of the guitar (his original instrument), and recruited Adam Richardson (ex-Spirmyard) as a bassist and vocalist. Three of the four tracks on We Will Lead You To Glorious Times have appeared in various combinations on prior demos and a split with Negative Reaction, but this debut combines them to give listeners a solid thirty minutes of material to soak in the acrid doom of Ramesses.

Ramesses’ brand of doom has a somewhat different texture than many. Their raw grittiness feels less like THC induced fuzz, and more like a murky, organic spinning cloud of bitterness. Richardson’s vocals compliment the music well, typically consisting of rumbling guttural yells, but also making use of more melodic singing in a few passages. There are of course the requisite monolithic riffs that hypnotize with a dark spaciness, but Bagshaw often overlays accents of more mobile melodies, as heard on “Master Your Demons”, which gives the song a nearly southern groove in sections. “Witchhampton” is the new song of the bunch, and it kicks off the album well with nine minutes of spacey riffing and rumbling, vitriolic doom. As usual, Mark Greening is all over the drum kit, providing a pummeling drive while finding room for plenty of interesting fills. He is in particularly fine form on “Ramesses II”, a song titled after the Egyptian ruler for whom the band is named. The centerpiece of the album however, is the eleven minute “Black Domina”. The track has by far the most range of the bunch, making good use of head bobbing, smoky riffing, caustic vocals, and long stretches of instrumental sections. The band noodles on riffs during quieter parts of the song, only to lull the listener before crashing headlong into a heavy section that includes impassioned clean bellows from Richardson. It’s a great crescendo, and it is a trick that manages to turn a simply long song into an epic one.

We Will Lead You To Glorious Times is a great start for Ramesses, and the band should make a noticeable splash in the genre. Fans of doom will no doubt be quite pleased." (Matt Mooring, MetalReview.com)


"We Will Lead You to Glorious Times is four songs (plus two videos) of impressive doomage. Sure, the closest reference point sound-wise will always be Electric Wizard, but there’s enough of an identity to bring Ramesses out from the shadow of Greening and Bagshaw’s old band. There’s less of the psychedelic noodling, for one. The songs are more direct, more heavy hitting. And Richardson’s vocals are gruffer, veering towards a death metal growl. If he had stuck with just that style, the overall effect would be lessened, but he’s also able to belt out when needed. With We Will Lead You to Glorious Times, Ramesses have carved their own niche in the world of doom. Recommended for fans of Electric Wizard, Ufomammut, and the like."
(Arzgarth, StonerRock.com)

Track Listing:

01. Witchampton
02. Master Your Demons
03. Ramesses II
04. Black Domina
05. Ramesses II (Video)
06. Master Your Demons (Video)

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