Band Submission: The Druids-Psychedelic/Doom From Silver Spring, Maryland

Band Name: The Druids
Genre: Psychedelic/Doom
Location: Silver Spring, Maryland
Brief Bio/Description: Formed in 2016 with members of D.C's stoner underground,(Weed Warlock)(Mondo). Inspired by Maryland's Legendary Doom/Rock scene, and fueled by psychedelic drugs. We're up and coming and stoked to jam.
Band Members:
Earth Druid (Eli) - Lead Guitar/Vox
Space Druid (Danny) - Auxiliary Guitar
Elder Druid (Jeremy) - Bass
Mountain Druid (Branden) - Drums
Links: Bandcamp | YouTube 

LP Review: 'Satori Junk' by Satori Junk

The debut full-length record from Milan, Italy’s, newest purveyors of heavy fuzz-stoner-metal-doom hybrid, Satori Junk, is a record to make you stop in your tracks, and become embroiled in the vibrations. The band says that their idea is to trap the listener in their “rabid and uncomfortable distorted world” and they pull this off with aplomb as one psychedelic doom-laden track after the next tightens its grip around your neck, making each breath more valuable than the last.

With eight tracks spanning an average of nine minutes each, it’s not a record for the faint-hearted. Combining their love of riffs and drawn out doom darkness, Satori Junk is a record which can be suffocating to the point of an asthma attack as opening tracks ‘T.T.D.’ and ‘Spooky Boogie’ wrap riffs and muffled barely-there vocals tight around the thorax, keeping you fixed in their grasp, drawing you into their cacophony of doom. It’s with ‘Spooky Boogie’ that they begin to venture into 60’s psychedelic tendencies layered over their bass-heavy doom riffs, and it makes for an other worldly mix, at times quite mesmerizing, until ‘Monsters’ firmly straps the stomping foot of doom back onto the effects pedal.

The eerie movie samples provide a chilling respite from the layered onslaught of the band’s doom meanderings while offering a glimpse into the distorted world that the band want you to enter, as ‘Shamaniac’ tells a tale of buying a hot dog with the sense of impending horror associated with the unknown entities of 1950s sci-fi films, but it’s not long before the UFO psychedelic doom re-enters the frame with 9 minutes of relentless riffs.

Satori Junk is an exceptional record, full of heavy riffs that entrap you, and making the psychedelic doom genre one to get seriously excited about again.

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Sunday Cinema: XV - 15 Years of Ufomammut

"Seth, where's the bin with all the Christmas decorations in it?"

Is she serious? I set aside a few hours this morning to saturate myself in the heaviest of Italian sludge cosmos and she's doing her damnedest to create a distraction. It's been a long time comin', but I've finally carved some time to dig into Ufomammut's DVD retrospective, XV. Countless extraneous variables contributed to this delay, but none more joy-bursting than the sound of my better half barking stupid questions about anything and damn-near everything.

Fifteen years? Hardly seems like it. These spacey sludgers have spanned an entire career evolving, innovating, and preparing lesson after lesson on how to structure and craft what amounts to a marriage of the ethereal and the unwritten. As the film points out, Ufomammut initially sought to fuse space with prehistoric men. Extracted relics have, for years, been slung beyond our galaxy's man-made bounds. They've drawn dyads so distinct, one of distance and staggering intimacy, one so exhausting that it's hard to believe it's also so immersive. This peek into the band's magick parallels Ufomammut's objective as well as it explains it.

Consider first the live twelve-track performance, a grainy, snuffed context accompanying the galactic sludge-doom infancy of early tracks like Superjunkhead and Zerosette. Filtered through black-and-white and sepia masks and laced with disorienting lumbers, you'd think you'd stumbled into a club's back gate and struck psychedelic gold. Over time, though, you're privy to an ongoing chemistry few acts can boast. Urlo, Poia, and Vita rip the same page and inflict the same glaze, performing as if they either don't know or don't care that viewers are having their senses raped by Helter-Skelter imagery. Throughout their tenure, Ufomammut have steadily swelled the importance of visually-stimulating sidecars. Here they blur lines between band, fan, and stagehand. And when Poia offers a warm smile at Stigma's end, we know that they know: they fucking nailed it.

On the documentary's end of things, the band's formation and initial lineup changes quickly give way to explanations on why they've remained a power trio. And when one former keyboardist sounds all at once vain and jealous while another dons a Lucha Libre mask and offers odd praises, it's hard to argue the band's decision to keep the fat trimmed. But where the doc most excels is not in what it historically explains, but in how it offers the explanation. Malleus delivers simple, straightforward, and chronological reflections on Ufomammut's evolutions. Much like their songs and, later, their albums, Ufomammut developed slowly over time. Godlike Snake was rough, they say. Snailking was an extension that received no promotion, and Lucifer Songs offered the band a chance to transition their sound. But oh, what followed...

This is just as Ufomammut has always been. The commitment to evolution and progress is evident throughout their catalog, and this is both directly and indirectly outlined here. Even as they discuss their early works and the accomplishments therein, the band is quick to acknowledge their shortcomings and resulting strides. It's also refreshing to learn a band as accomplished as this is open to criticism, is engaging with audiences of any size, and holds true to the roots they set down fifteen years prior. They honor fans and touring support as much as they honor their own sound, and they insist on doing it all them-fucking-selves. Awesome.

XV essentially offers two films. Magickal Mastery Live is low-slung sludge jams laced with a visual haze dripping from every moment's borders. At times, the band appears swallowed and any epileptic should turn back now. Jumpy, nervous, and laced with ancient symbols, there's no better supplement to one of the world's finest psychedelic doom acts than these eighty minutes. The visuals blanket the sounds with malevolent imperfection, crafting a full-circle experience that's a trippy cocktail of dark warps and burned retinas.

Of course the interviews are more sobering, though they're hardly less interesting. The band's DIY ethic runs a ribbon through 2012's double-album Oro (Opus Primus / Opus Alter), essentially one riff expanded into ninety minutes. The band delves deepest here, and not because the double album is their most recent. It's assertively their most complex and mature, another in a series of statements and stomps forward. Vocals are another instrument, something most Heavy Planet readers would acknowledge. But it's the visual element that's developed into the missing link, the emotive corner the band truly polished over time.

For fifteen years, Ufomammut have strung a series of increasingly expansive and fluid sounds, all interwoven and fortified with the threads of unmatched heaviness. So when the band's members deflect accolades and attempt to acknowledge the luck they've experienced, it's difficult to buy. These three men have become Ufomammut, and Ufomammut has become these three men. They set out to "play the heaviest stuff in the world." XV holds three-plus hours of footage illustrating just how they managed to pull this off.

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Sunday Shudder: Salem's Pot - "...Lurar ut dig på prärien"

If I scan my tenure as a Heavy Planet contributor, I'm smacked with the stern reality of being a rigid, teed-up Virgo. One ridiculous astrological analysis promised I'd suffer mundane sidecar perils like skepticism, inflexibility, and cold interference. The real issue is likely inflated narcissism, thinking Heavy Planet readers wanna sit through another paragraph of Del Griffith anecdotes instead of getting to the fucking point. Here it is: Sunday Sludge gets a break today. I've fallen in lust with Salem's Pot and their blend of fuzz, doom, psychedelia, and evil to the point where I wanna carve my back with a sleazy Soledad Miranda likeness just so I can validate the crude compulsions tugged when I spin this band.

Sift among sinuous, supple comparisons to 70's fuzz and find your own brand of obsession. EP's Sweeden (2012) and Watch Me Kill You (2013) delivered orgasmic rubs of throwback laced with the veiled haze of violence, but ...Lurar ut dig på prärien swells Salem's Pot into spooky sex-psych monarchs. If thirty-five minutes in a twisted genie's bottle dooming and shrooming on erotic, murderous, tongue-wagging excess isn't on your bucket list, turn it up. You'll find your poison among these three tracks.

On a tinny warble of stretch and strum, the fourteen-minute Creep Purple licks a ghast, ethereal cosmos. Sabbathian doom riffs cake and coat, while Mentor Mike's vocal shrouds keep things distant and connected all at once. Fright abounds on the stringy and viscous necrophilia of Nateonomicon's guitars, shifting to follow the union of your grandfather's davenport and layers of cosmic swirl. The band's confidence is strewn about with shag carpet nonchalance, and as the vocal gasps atop imploding elements, listeners scratch at daylight and become rubber-necked pups. The real treat here, though, is the slow-motion administration of fuzz, shaking and hanging like Christmas-light meats and buzzing with the distaste of unexpected guests.

Victims get their thighs pounded under the straddling tandem of Dr. Death and Nothing Hill. First, Salem's Pot sit about the fire and consider how they'll proceed, evolving toward distant, ehoed plucks and a cymbal accompaniment. When dementia bleeds through cracks of fuzz, just nod and try to breathe shallow, ignoring the intervention of lurid murder. The disjointed tempos somehow find a home, creeping sideways on a smothering fuzz jerk-off. Carnival deaths begin to add up on a closing that's as coaxed as is it cautioned.

Nothing Hill is an immediate recall of those past releases. Passive aggression becomes passive antagonism, but the track remains cool in its barbs. The song's thorax is tickled with a psychedelic buzz jam, hovering with cool, calculated sustain until the development of militant churn. As we begin our descent, roman candles spike the atmosphere and there's almost a plea amid the shivers. The closing spaced-out spiral of spit and shine is the band's stoner-doom cleansing.

Throughout ...Lurar ut dig på prärien is a thick tension, organic as a French farm and fabricated to greet your blind trust. The hallways linking these three tracks vibrate with strobes, stretching like a neck in the gallows and glazing walls with vampiric silhouettes. To release three devastatingly haunting recordings in under two years is a lecherous undertaking, and Salem's Pot find delight in infliction. Slowly sticking riffed spikes through tapestries of electric smoke, Salem's Pot corner their prey and daze us into numbing fools. You're gonna whimper over a little smoke blown in your eyes? All these guys really wanna do is split you open.

For fans of: Electric Wizard, Sabbath, Hawkwind
Pair with: Ruthless Rye IPA, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

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Sunday Sludge: AcidLand - "Through Darkness"

If you're gonna go on a trip, you're gonna need some supplies. Follow that dumb blonde down a wormhole and find yourself in a heap o' trouble, did ya? You probably didn't even think ahead enough to stuff a sandwich in your pocket before your sniffer tugged you out the door and away from real life. So here we are with no shoes, a week's stubble, and a body that's become a canvas of subcutaneous bruising.

Rub some dirt on it. And spin these four tracks from Nysa, Poland's AcidLand, an instrumental psych-sludge outfit promising nothing more than to tune low and play slow. The spook is cranked to eleven on Through Darkness, twenty-three minutes of repetitive, patient doomscape numbing your fingers and twisting your nerves. But AcidLand poke your brain stem with layers and atmospheres, fuzzing and buzzing with vacant occupancies balancing thick patience. Take my hand.

Introducing a vast, hollow terrain is The Outsider, a tin-plucked fuzz buster ripping through wet jeans. The rhythmic reverberations pair with sharp thrills for an eerie chop and chip effect. The dynamic pauses need no vocal accompaniment, just smooth stoner passages slaving on a grind and spacing on a warble. The ends are unknown, and marrying the ethereal with the earthly rarely works this well.

Path Into The Light is a slow-rolling smoker a la Salem's Pot. Wavy, wide-open, sparse, lonely. Tinsel litters the cosmos at half-speed and guitars burn like flaming molasses. This brown acid soundtrack cruises inward though, splashed with double-kicks, closed eyes, and gaping mouths. Spit down the well and forget how weird this feels. The Sabbathain influence of Lost In AcidLand will put you right at home. Buzzing with a seer's patience and swelling on a sludgy walk to nowhere, saws give chase and mud sprays everywhere. The stumble to trot progression hardly breaks the mold, but I hardly fucking care. This is straight sticky sweetness from a lost era.

And we're left with a flattened hope on the album's closing title track, set ablaze with riffs and rife with sludge-drawn beefiness. Peppered with whispers of evil, this smooth psychedelia dooms endlessly. Wet stones seep purple smoke and we're wrapped in a calm acceptance. Listeners are warm with buzz and sick with stew. Delivered with confidence and incredible patience, the album ends on a stagger, spitting blood and rising to face a coup de grâce.

I may hit repeat a few times. The long drags AcidLand peddle on Through Darkness may induce quite a trip, but break it down and there's more sharpened structure than sprawling diatribe. In patience lies promise, and AcidLand never rush the buzz. Sustained aches and an overdose of fuzz may best characterize this release, but the subconscious beating lands in slow-motion strikes. If a blottered mindfuck is your bag, have at it. But AcidLand trip pretty well on their own.

For fans of: Salem's Pot, Black Sabbath, Uncle Acid
Pair with: 2013 Bourbon County Stout, Goose Island Beer Co.

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LP Review - "Born a Heavy Morning" by Ice Dragon

Ice Dragon are not just any old psyche/doom/stoner/heavy rock band. Not only are they one of the most prolific I've ever come across with 12 releases since 2010, and that's not including their releases under their alter egos Tentacle, The Mangled Dead and Qosmic Qey amongst others; they are also consistently fucking great and they just keep getting better.

Their Facebook blurb sums them up nicely:

Ice Dragon makes recordings in a basement near Boston, Massachusetts. Works include many albums, singles, and EPs, as well as numerous releases under various other names. New music is issued frequently and spontaneously.

This 12th release under their Ice Dragon moniker lives up to its title of "Born a Heavy Morning" and is some of the most experimental work that I've heard yet from them which makes this album a real mixed bag of sounds. Yes there are heavy riff work-outs with the inimitable Ice Dragon plodding stomps, maudlin words and deep blues guitar lickery but they are few on this album. What stands out for me most of all are the short skits between the main songs some of which serve as nods to my least favorite time of the day; morning.

The track titles on this album are sheer genius so chew on these for a moment if you will: "In Which a Man Rises, Washes and Eats Before Work" or "In Which a Man Daydreams About a Girl From His Youth" and "(I will) Watch My Hair Grow."
  
For the most part the main songs on this album are slow introspective numbers and sometimes they are quite twee, gentle even, much as an early morning in spring with a newly risen sun shining it's lovely rays through the gap in my curtains and informing me it's time to get the hell up out of my bed and start my day. I hit play on my player and this album fits perfectly with my first coffee and toke of the day; this is morning psyche-doom to go with your shit, shower, shave and cereal and it slays the sleepy eyes and shakes you awake enough to face the day ahead. I'd like call it "musical breakfast" so I will, even if it doesn't quite do justice to the fine work these Ice Dragon gentleman have done for us.

One wonders what else Ice Dragon have up their sleeves for their future releases but with the consistently great music spewing forth from these 4 Ice Dragons that dwell within a basement, you just know they are going to hit all the right riffs, all the right notes and all the right skins.

Thank you Ice Dragon for being you.

"Born a Heavy Morning" is out now as a name your own price download from their bandcamp where you can also pre-order the album on CD.

                         FACEBOOK // BANDCAMP

EP Review - "Polynseeds" by Bomg

How do you pronounce Bomg? I've spent the past several hours walking around and muttering the word quietly over and over and people were looking at me with furrows of worry caked on their faces. This one has frazzled my brain, it does not compute, I fail at saying a word that looks so simple to pronounce but the synapses misfire and pop in tiny puffs of smoke when my mouth forms the necessary shape in which to say the word and so I say it over and over like a mantra; or I'm stuck in an OCD nightmare.

With that in mind I sit down to listen to Bomg's follow up EP to April's "Plutonaut", captivated as I am by the cover artwork and realizing that it looks a bit like where I live. Rolling green hills and shrooms on logs, yup. We've got all that stuff here. So I decided to go for a walk and listen to Bomg's "Polysneeds", instead of sitting at home muttering to myself and nodding my head back and forth and glaring at the carpet. I take a stroll through a nearby woods, toking as I go and as the opening chords of "Intro" flood my ears with galaxy shaking doom, I realize I made a good choice. I just wish I had a big grey beard, a long woolen hooded cloak and a trusty oaken staff...or something.

Feedback moves into the Sleepy stoner riff of "Polysneeds of Shubin", the stoner caravan is launched into a journey through psychedelic doom blending huge megalithic riffs, heavy lumbering drums, and spacey smokey lyrics. The waves of lowend are piled upon you and catch you in a trance; this is hypnotic, even shamanic doom of a most ancient kind played by oath taken high priests of the riff. The trees move gently around me but I can almost feel the ground shake under my feet, even though I listen through headphones, the sonic weight sinks through me into the ground, shaking it as I walk and nearly bringing me to my knees once or thrice.

I continue apace as the massive chugging fuzz of "Etaph" shoots waves of earthy yet cosmic doom down my spine. Soaring and drifting vocals sound a ritual chant as the riff is carved onto a moss covered stone, ancient spirits look on with folded arms, nodding their ghostly heads in riff approval. Pan's pipes sing a luring tune halfway until the airy chant returns to herald the falling of the sky as splitting guitar licks and thick fuzz crushes all but herein is celebration as the pace picks up into a hugely satisfying stoner rock blaze out, complete with double fist and long hair raising moments of metal obliteration.

A drone of feedback leads to "Etaph pt.2" and Bomg turning on the sludge hose and dowsing another transcendental doom journey with thick slatherings of fuzz. Earth shaking drums evoke ethereal guitar movements creating a spacescape that you float through in your mind's eye until you are snapped out of your vision into a torrent of psychedelic and soul stirring doom with such a simple but memorable guitar lick which brings to mind Warhorse and their brilliant and ultra heavy output all those years ago.

"Sanikov Land" takes us on our final journey through Bomg's crushing psychedelic doom, the expertly crafted riffs on full display driven along by a rumble of ground shaking drums while chanted calls echo through inner and outer space making Bomg a band that plays some of the most hypnotic doom I have heard in a long time.

However you pronounce their name, it seems that Bomg don't have a facebook but this absolutely mind blasting doom album can be previewed and then bought at their Bandcamp. I urge you to do both.

BANDCAMP|FACEBOOK

Nuclear Dog's Atomic Split: Midryasi - "Black, Blue & Violet" / Peacemaker - "Cult .45"

Today is disparate day. Two albums that haven't got a whole lot in common, but what they do have in common is the most vital part of what they do. Both bands employ unmuffled, big engine guitars in creating decibel shattering music. One strips most parts bare and then polishes those up to present clean, tight, raw stoner doom metal that is no frills, no holds barred, fist pumping power. The other constructs multi-faceted melodies on top of clear and precise stoner riffs, crafting an intricate experience that easily engages you in an experience of passionate sound. Each band has their unique approach, and each succeed in a great way. I love it when such disparate means produce unique, eternal quality.
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MIDRYASI - "BLACK, BLUE & VIOLET

Midryasi are a veteran stoner/doom/psych band, hailing from Varese, Italy, originally formed in 2002, from which point they have worked their way up in the underground metal world through incremental milestones that attest to their diligence and perseverance as well as their innate ability to create superbly brilliant music. "Black, Blue & Violet" joins "Corridors" as the bands full length LPs, the latter having been unleashed on the music world in 2009 and the former recently released at the beginning of the present year.

Band members:

Convulsion - Throat, Bass
Paul P. - Guitars
Udz - Keys
Sappah - Drums

Sometimes it can be challenging to classify some of the bands or albums that find their way to Heavy Planet, with hundreds of them crossing the blurred, fuzzy lines between genres. Is it stoner rock? Is it doom metal? Is it psychedelica? Is it retro/classic/vintage rock, blues metal? There are infinite combinations, all of them exciting and deeply gratifying to the fans of down tuned, heavy distortion. Midryasi, perhaps, have developed a new cross genre, something, if not completely original, at least quite rare. I would call it stoner opera.

The song structures, melodies, and hooks present on this dark album of fantastic realms are not wholly derivative, but could likely be traced or compared to some of the better known concept albums of the 70s and beyond in architecture and atmosphere. What sets it wholly apart is its penchant for down tuned fuzzery on  vast regions of its quality sound, setting a hook of a different sort to work in conjunction with the brilliantly clever musical barbs found throughout the music.

As with any concept album, the fun is in exploring over and over the telling of the tale, both musically and lyrically, discovering new and different revelations, avenues, hidden recesses, and unforeseen flashes of inspiration and insight upon each telling. The craftsmanship on these songs is such that the strength of the music grows with each musical trek.

Two interesting tidbits, one about the band, one on the album. Midryasi is derived from the scientific term midriasis, describing the dilation of the eyes pupils, something most of us know a bit about, I'd wager. Track six on "Black, Blue & Violet" is titled "Nuclear Dog" and is a total coincidence. I had already listened to and loved the album before studying the track titles and song lyrics, which is when I made my exciting discovery. "Nuclear Dog" is not my favorite track on the album, that honor goes to "Hole of the Saturday Night", a fuzz laden monstrosity of epic, soaring proportions.

Head on over to bandcamp and begin an epic, enduring adventure on this extraordinary stoner rock opera.





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PEACEMAKER - "CULT .45"

This album first came across the Heavy Planet desk as a demo back in 2012 and stirred considerable excitement at the time. Now that the full 8 track LP has been released the quality first experienced back then has carried through to the album entire. This is meat and potatoes stoner / doom music, none finer, none heavier, none more satisfying than what this foursome from London have to offer, with a sound that is at once clean and ragged. Ragged by design as fuzz and distortion are carefully, passionately, unleashed for maximum effect, clean in studio delivery as there is absolutely nothing out of balance or out of place on any portion of the album. Professionalism is always welcome, especially when it come to your favorite listening pleasures.

Band Members:

Al Osta - Vocals
Al Lawson - Bass / Wizard
Sam Taylor - Guitar
Rich Maw - Drums

Big huge, rolling riffs of gargantuan proportions are propagated regularly throughout this album in measured and melodic method, driving deep through to the molten magma core of your soul, sparking primal urges both fierce and pleasurable. The riffs and rolls of guitar and bass play off one another in harmony and dissent, creating exquisite chaos that is tempered by the bludgeoning force of unyielding drumwork and overseen with master strokes of rough hewn vocals. There is a palpable magnetism and dynamic fury on this album that raises hackles and sets the listener on a razor's edge of brilliance and force.

Opening with the megadoom "The Siberian Problem", a song that sets the tone perfectly for much of what's to follow, and the ensuing assault of "Follow the Rats", a forceful and measured onslaught of reverberation resplendent with doom hooks and gargantuan riffs, Peacemaker set a perfect tone for "Cult .45".

On the heels of "Follow the Rats" is yet another riff leviathan of perfectly measured doom melody, "Dead Man's Keys". "Soul Cheater" is a blitzkrieg battalion of low tuned machinery mounting an onslaught of speed and blistering riffs. "Journey of the Faithful" and "Sorrow Trip" round out the album's excellent soul searing stormclouds of foreboding and arousal.

One of the excellent hallmarks of Peacemaker's music, as heavy and downtuned as it may be, is their ability to craft fine melodies, wonderous hooks, and catchy patches in much of their songwriting. They display their ability in a small, but significant way on the short tracks "Mane of Serpents" and "Grey Sky", interceding the brilliant darkness on the majority of the album with the dolorous and mournful light of this sweet, ebony pair.





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LP Review - Toner Low "III"

 
Toner Low are a band from the Netherlands that formed in 1998 and their latest release "III" is their 3rd release, of course. They say you should never judge a book by its cover and I suppose the same could be said for a CD, tape or LP, but with Toner Low's latest, the cover is quite telling and very inviting indeed.

Continuing on from 2008's "II" with tracks simply titled "Phase 1-5", "III" contains tracks "Phase 6-9" and what Toner Low bring here is more of their ultra heavy psych-doom with a low end tone that is so damn low and driving that it bores a hole right into your chest like a 1,000 ton tunnel boring machine. I had an actual complaint from my landlord that the bass was too heavy and was rattling his windows downstairs so I waited until I knew he would be out before I cranked this mother of an album up, fired up a bowl or 3 and immersed myself in the very heavy weight frequencies laid forth by Toner Low on "III".

"Phase 6" begins with backwards percussion leading to churning and tumbling riffs and thunderous drum work with a sonic weight behind it all that is so resonant that it rattles everything within a wide area. Distant cries call from within the bass onslaught and heavily effected and grimy guitar licks squirm in and out as this huge monstrosity of a track breathes in and out vast clouds of thick green smoke.

"Phase 7" hangs on some electronic hum for a brief moment before plunging and hypnotic riffs take the tone lower still, the track sloths along in no hurry at all, giving the listener the chance to savor every rib rattling frequency. There are fleeting calmer moments but soon the massive throb returns but this time adding even more weight showing that explorations in heavy music are not limited by anything but imagination and Toner Low show here that theirs is of a kind fixed firmly on experimenting with the low tone. This track ends in a chaos of twisting psychedelic noise that had me thinking of a Butthole Surfers live show with Gibby and his "Gibbytronix" in all its full on bad trip splendor.

"Phase 8" opens with vague and droning organs and plodding drums followed by atmospheric and moody bass and guitar jams that float dreamily, lulling the listener into a peaceful trance. The tracks drops to the organ drone for a moment before the huge plunging bass heavy riffs are unleashed with the organ sounding out louder to aid in an almost evangelical praise at the alter of the riff within the church of the heavy. Godly chants sound out a cosmic prayer while relentless riff delivery gives pleasing massages to the soul. It is so easy to get lost within the trance that Toner Low induce so when they have unexpected breaks in their groove, one is woken from the trance suddenly where Toner Low lay on even heavier and hypnotically groovy riffs with which to savor. It's a very clever move by Toner Low as it kept me interested in what I was hearing.

"Phase 9" drifts from silence towards a catchy bass line and quiet radio interference and drifting feedback. A lazy swaggering riff and complimentary drum thuds and smacks kicks things into gear to unfold a heavily stoned behemoth of depth dwelling noise. Creepy echoing guitars sneak in to give an uneasy edge before descending into filthy sludge dregs that pushes my bass cab to its limits. I had to turn the bass down a bit for fear of my windows cracking or me getting a nose bleed. This is Toner Low at their most dark and repressive and is easily on a par with the horrifying bleakness of bands like Moss and Cough. The singer turns his voice to eerie choir singing that adds an ancient vibe of mysterious monks chanting in the cold stone darkness of some long forgotten crypt. The chanting vanishes to leave a barrage of weighty and memorable riffs that culminate in an instrumental freak out which then drops to lone bass line followed by a quietly weeping piano melody which ends the track in an emotive send off for Toner Low's "III".

Get over to their Bandcamp now to purchase this landmark and essential release in the world of heavy music.

BANDCAMP // FACEBOOK // WEBSITE

LP Review - HUATA/BITCHO Split

"European Doomkrieg is summoning!
Gathering our disciples for fuzz ritual ceremonies, we are the luminous legacy of the sacred green land. Under the mourning star we preach, the great light of truth, the holy power of extra-terrestrials initiators that guide us to glorious times. Here is the Occult!"

Now all gather around if you will for this superb quality 3 track split LP with 2 from French occult doom stoners Huata and 1 from the Netherlands dwelling Bitcho.

Huata's "The Retaliator" is a 15 min 29 seconds psychedelic doom journey into the farthest reaches of space. At times floating through the gentle aethyrs and at others down-tuned very low and at others soaring to the pinnacle of space and time, it's a slow travelling myriad colored cloud of space dust, the remnants of some exploded star loaded with the potential for life. Layers of sonic beauty are presented in this universal mind trip with crunchy sludge, organic organs, transcendental and distant calls, psychedelic soundscapes; it is a breakthrough dose of DMT that explodes the third eye launching the shaman into the innerverse where dwells the gates to the omniverse. The machine elves dance around and this is the music they dance to. It's a finely crafted piece of audio art, a dream beyond a mere human mind's capability to conjure and it has existed forever.

"Hercolubus" is more out and out sludge laden doom and compared to it's predecessor it is over so soon but in the moments that the sounds fall upon you there is no doubt that Huata are taking their sound to new higher dimensions. It drips with anguished emotions in a similar way to Neurosis' or AmanRa's heart breaking but soul empowering sonic sonnets. Darkly cold and drifting ambiance sucks impressively mighty sludge riffs from the space-doom abyss in a calling to higher realms of existence.

Huata's last album "Atavist of Mann, (2012)" features extremely heavy skull-fucking doom so this new sound they have forged is a big departure from their previous release. It's less harsh and in your face than their last offering but no less heavy.

Bitcho's beast "10050 cielo drive" enters the split with a grim trip of uncomfortable psychedelic revolutions. With a Godflesh-like feel to the track shown in it's down tempo simplicity but with added electronic experimentation, it may feel uncomfortable in a 'Oh shit I'm coming up!' kind of way but it is hugely and satisfyingly hypnotic. Towards the end of this track are unleashed heavily effected vocals that sound like the war cries of some intergalactic creature hell-bent on universal destruction and it is oh so delicious to listen to. Cavernous bass crunches accentuate the track for the most part alongside slow thunderous drum explosions and creeping squelchy slithering guitar Wah effects that make this track a perfect addition to this split.

This gatefold LP comes with a beautiful retro-futuristic cover made by Benjamin Moreau of Huata and is out to own now from MUSIC FEAR SATAN.

HUATA FACEBOOK / BITCHO FACEBOOK / MUSIC FEAR SATAN BANDCAMP