Druid Lord - Grotesque Offerings (2018)

I think the folks over at Hells Headbangers are desperate to see me go broke. On top of their incredible distro selection, they keep releasing all these wicked albums that I am powerless to resist. One of their more recent tactics in their war against my wallet is Druid Lord's "Grotesque Offerings". The band's second album is a contorted clump of horrific death/doom that will eviscerate you and drag your mangled carcass into the crypt! The first track is titled "House of Dripping Gore" and I think the imagery that the name conjures really captures the band's sound well - a fine estate with walls coated in bloody chunks of flesh, slowly creeping downward before suddenly dropping to the floor with a wet slosh. House of Dripping Gore also emphasizes the DEATH in death/doom - hell, if you didn't bother listening to the other tracks on the album you might just think this was a slow-paced death metal album. It starts to get gloomier with the second track, but it never loses those scathing death metal sensibilities it establishes up front - it just melds with the thick sounds of horror-inspired doom. As the album creeps on you'll start to hear organ/synth touches that bring moments of sophisticated terror to the agonizing atmosphere, but it's really the brutal, low, hard-churning metal that will keep you coming back. There are other death/doom bands playing in similar veins (Hooded Menace for instance), but damn do Druid Lord make their shit GRUESOME. So if you like your music grisly, Grotesque Offerings is going to do it for you! -Brandon

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Windhand/Satan's Satyrs - Split (2018)

Windhand and Satan's Satyrs - a sinister pair of bands each with some impressive releases under their belts - have come together to create an undeniable force of evil in the form of a new split album. Their titanic union has enough weight to open a portal to the underworld and let the denizens of hell come crawling out of the dark. But each band is going to take a very different approach in conjuring their demons - Windhand is slow and solemn, while Satan's Satyrs is rocking and rancorous. Windhand contributes their two tracks first, coming down with massive doom metal that slowly swirls with pentagrams and burning candles to evoke something mystic. "Old Evil" will hit you pretty hard with the fuzz and slow, smoky grooves and then "Three Sisters" quiets down to draw you in deeper using an ominous tone and a screeching organ that will make your hair stand on end. Guitar, bass, drums, and vocals all speak their impure intentions clearly with every note devoted to their dark ceremony. However, Satan's Satyrs is next and they don't need any of the black magic or profane rituals to make something unholy - they simply play on the evil already burning in your soul. Their three tracks are sleazy, motorized, completely wicked, and extra fun! "Alucard AD 2018" charges through the night high on speed and sin and I think "Succubus" is set to the unnatural rhythm of the devil's laughter. The last song "Ain't That Lovin' You, Baby" puts a pretty nasty spin on that sweet spot where rock 'n' roll grows out of the blues and then kicks it into high gear at the end. Different styles but the album's evil nature brings everything together to make one otherworldly hunk of metal that will drive you screaming into the dark - turn this one up once you're ready to take the plunge! -Brandon

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Ilsa - Corpse Fortress (2018)

Here lies Ilsa's Relapse Record's debut "Corpse Fortress", and it's a crusty slab of Doom Sludge that is blackened to perfection. While this release probably won't offer anything that sounds new or fresh to people who have one ear firmly placed on the Sludge underground, the repugnant sounds emanating from this moldy tomb are worth the listen. Ilsa has been around for a decade now, and it looks like all of that hard work pummeling people with brutish tones is definitely paying off. This release is slow, agitated, and heavy as fuck. The riffs are infectious like the plague, and are just as lethal. The tones and sounds on this are about as ideal as they get when it comes to Sludge Doom hymnals and volatile caveman-esque diatribes. These dudes have a crazy raw energy about them that's delivered with a feral and frenzied intensity throughout each of the album's 11 tracks.
The guitars and bass work together to create this deep, massive, and bloated sound, that's sure enough to shake the cobwebs and dust off in any crypt. Again I'd like to emphasize that the tones and sounds overall are like the epitome of what I would consider good when listening to Sludge Doom. Light on fuzz and heavy on chugs. Everything from the right amount of distortion, to the right amount of feedback. It's definitely spot on. I really like the drums on this as well, and the way that they know exactly what to play for each riff. It's not all low and slow, as there are some d-beat moments, some double kick OSDM/Death Doom moments, and one example of the strings and double kick playing in unison that pretty fucking sweet, but wasn't common throughout. The guttural screech of the vocals are like icing on a festering cake of sewn together skin, with bugs and maggots crawling underneath.
Overall I really dug this. I may have to revisit it again by the end of the year to see if it's going to be one of my favorites, but I'm pretty sure this is going to make it. Awesome release, highly recommended! Cheers! -Samir

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Tony Tears - Demons Crawl at Your Side (2018)

 

Last year I picked up a split between Tony Tears and Violet Temple titled "Witchmothers" - it was my first exposure to either band. While Violet Temple laid down some hair-raising doom, Tony Tears focused on building an atmosphere of eerie horror using trippy synth and guitar work. Both came together to create something delightfully dark, so when I saw that Tony Tears put out a new album called "Demons Crawl at Your Side", I was definitely interested in checking it out. But what I didn't realize earlier is that "Tony Tears" is a name much like "Dio" or "Danzig" - it's the name of both a man and the band behind him. While the Witchmothers split featured Tony Tears the man, this album is from Tony Tears the band and as a result this reaches beyond a chilling ambiance and hits new depths. If I didn't tell you these guys were from Italy, you would probably hear this album immediately ask me if the band was from Italy. They capture that Italian horror aesthetic perfectly, and on top of that they hit all the high points of Italian doom - layered instruments feeding you a psychedelic feeling with moaning, off-center vocals and synth tones that make you feel like you've woken up out of a dream, but you feel like you might still be in another dream. Paul Chain fans will be well satisfied. Sometimes you'll be left sitting hopeless in a gloomy stone dungeon like on "In Lilith's Days" which stews in melancholy as dreary riffs, disturbing whispers, and distant chants all seem to close in on you. But on the other hand "Demon Always Stands at the Darkness of Fear" is driven by a classic rock 'n' roll rhythm that sends it running motorized down the road, until it comes to a tense, terrifying pause when that rhythm falls away and a trepidatious guitar backs fearful vocals in the face of unholy judgment. Each track is a unique experience and the music tells amazing stories. You'll be taken through synthesizer squeals that will give you goosebumps, pensive guitar passages, gothic melodies, heavy headbanging moments, psyched-out sound experiments, and more all while Tony Tears maintains an unshakable eerie atmosphere that really makes this album special. You just have to hear this to understand its many facets - open yourself to this dark magic and let it evoke an unreal horror within you! -Brandon

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Deathbell - With The Beyond (2018)

Fuck man, where did this come from? After listening to it, my best guess is that this is a gift granted to humanity by the grim reaper as a ghastly reminder of our own inevitable demise, meant to breed terror in our souls and make us crumble under the weight of our own mortality. Or perhaps in a more unlikely scenario, there's an amazing band out of France called Deathbell and their debut album "With The Beyond" is mind-meltingly good. Assuming your speakers aren't busted you need to turn this on right now or you'll be missing out on chilling doom metal that you can feel reverberating in your bones with a sound that haunts you even after the music stops. The dirge of crawling, titanic riffs carve through this plane of existence and into the next, letting you slip through the crack between realms and see beyond the veil of death. In this murky, shadowy domain you will lose yourself, dissolve into a mist, and become one with the essence of the void. Songs are slow and fucking heavy, just the way doom metal should be, but also have all these memorable, catchy hooks that you just GIVE yourself to. Every note seems to produce this aural smoke that just hangs in the air until it bleeds into you. A ghostly voice sings out, and because you are now formless and wavering in the dark, its eerie tone is the only thing that you're able to latch on to as the music throws you around in the black. Occult and psychedelic vibes come in and out, but the bleak requiem of doom marches on through it all. Almost calls to mind Electric Wizard's "Witchcult Today", but slowed down and amplified through an unnatural fog. Once you've become one with the haze, there's no escape... But why would you want to leave? Welcome to your new home floating in the ether - I promise the sound of the abyss is worth every moment. -Brandon

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Coffin Torture - Dismal Planet (2018)

I don't even know if it gets any better than this for me this year. I'm not even sure there has ever been a time where as soon as I heard like the first 30 seconds of an album, I knew it was going to be my favorite for that year. However, this album did it for me. It was that deep ultra heavy groove, and that dank wall of over driven fuzz that's more like a cloud of smoke that's thick enough to suffocate you. When I listen to this I feel like I'm surrounded. Further indication of what I am talking about can be seen on full display on the album cover. Feast your eyes on that nightmarish vision of a psychedelic mind warp. Mixing together a claustrophobic blend of Stoner, Death/Doom, Sludge, and an overdose of Heavy Fuzz, Coffin Torture wish to alter your preconceived notions of Stoner Doom, and send you lights years in space to the acid-tinged "Dismal Planet".
This album sounds like the aural equivalent to finding a black light poster that was abandoned in a shed, so it was adopted and made into a bee hive and it's now swarming with stingers and covered with thick liquid gold. The stoner grooves on this thing engulf you with fear, dread and paranoia. The riffs in general are colossal as fuck,  like some deep space dragon that vomits neon colored lava. A lot of that comes from the strings being tuned to god knows what. I'm assuming some ultra low bowel rattling tuning similar to Conan. The vocals and drums on this pretty spot on too. The singer has a nasty, harsh, and piercing voice, that's as subtle as sandpaper to skin. The drums seem to always know where to go. Whether it's time to slow down to a sludgy crawl, or time to take some speed and play a Motorhead beat, the drums are tight as fuck.
Stoner Doom gets a bad rap for just regurgitating the same type of shit, but Coffin Torture have shown us is that when everyone else is just ripping off Sabbath, Sleep, or Electric Wizard you gotta get really fucking nasty and play some gnarly ass sounding shit. It doesn't hurt that the riffs are pretty memorable as well. These dudes are going places. Well fucking done! Cheers! -Samir

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Madvro - Invocation of High Wizard (2018)

Upon a high mountain in Serbia, an incantation slips between a pair of old, wrinkled lips. Solemnly, with arms raised in the air and eyes closed in concentration, an ancient sorcerer recites a spell of ruin. At first, mere specks appear in the sky, but with each passing moment they grow larger until they are recognizable as a swarm of meteors set to crash upon the earth. This is the work of Madvro, a band that has damned us all with their debut album "Invocation of the High Wizard". We're all doomed, but it's going to be a hell of a ride! This is an album that hits both the highs and lows of stoner doom, combining rocking stoner grooves with a sense of impending terror, but the stoner-to-doom ratio varies from song to song. "Mouth Breathers" leans hard on the stoner side of things with plenty of upbeat swagger and only a twang of foreboding in the vocal tone to cast the shadow of fear across your soul. But "Healing the Good Child of God" takes the opposite approach with plenty of unfiltered doom - dreary, slow, and heavy. I kinda hear a touch of The Sword through it all, but if they had gone in a darker, more ominous direction. No matter what you're getting at the moment though, you can be sure that with every track you're going feel the ground shaking. It could be the massive riffs blasting through your speakers and making the whole building rumble or maybe it's just the earth trembling as doomsday approaches. Perhaps the best way to understand this album is through the last track "Mud Giant". Just think of the sound as a massive creature made of muck, towering over the land, spreading horror wherever it treads, and coating the world beneath it in sloshy filth - but within that the vague notion of humanity. However you want to think about it, it's really good shit, so I suggest you listen before the wizard's invocation kills us all! -Brandon
 

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