Occult Vibe Haven (OVH)
Gozu are a funny band to pin down. You hear the opening riff of āCorinthian Leatherfaceā and expect a fairly straightforward dose of Boston stoner rock, then Marc Gaffney starts singing and the song takes on an almost poppy character. Those harmonies are so far removed from the usual gruff delivery that I sometimes wonder […]
GOLD SPIRE are still an awkward fit for anybody who wants to keep their metal in clearly marked compartments. The saxophone and flute are too prominent to be treated as decoration, the doom/death metal is too important to dismiss as a bit of heaviness added to an experimental rock record, and the doom element gives […]
There’s a lot going on in Palegazer’s music, but I like the fact that these Portuguese lads don’t seem particularly interested in keeping it inside one box. White Mourning moves between atmospheric post-metal, sludge and doom, with the occasional blackened edge, and apparently the three of them weren’t sitting around trying to decide which particular […]
Splits can be a bit of a gamble. Sometimes you get two bands that sound so alike that the whole thing could pass for a regular album by one group. Other times, the difference between the two acts is so pronounced that you wonder what brought them together in the first place. Loveā¢Loveā¢Love and Ćlgod […]
Moon Destroys have a new singer, a new album and, to some extent, a different way of doing things. She Walks By Moonlight had plenty of room for hazy, drawn-out passages, whereas OMNI gets to the songs more quickly. The guitars are still thick with fuzz, the atmosphere is still there, but the melodies are […]
ClĆøudy Skies had me waiting for the guitars to turn ugly. There’s plenty of time spent with these clean, ringing melodies, and I like the sound of them, but I kept wanting the duo to push things further instead of letting another stretch of dreamy atmosphere roll by. When the heavier parts finally kick in, […]
IRATA have been around since 2007, yet here we are with only their fourth full-length. Seven years have passed since Tower, and Human doesn’t sound like a band desperately trying to make up for lost time. Quite the opposite, actually. These eight songs take their time, sometimes to a fault, but there’s enough going on […]
Twenty years as a band, four full-length albums, and enough long breaks to make that anniversary feel a little questionable even to the people celebrating it. Our Ceasing Voice have never been the most predictable outfit, and The Origin of Everything comes after another stretch of silence, with songs rescued from abandoned sessions and newer […]
There was always more to WITCH RIPPER than the sludge tag suggested. The Seattle quartet started out heavier and rougher, but HOMESTEAD already showed a band that wasn’t particularly interested in staying in one lane. THE FLIGHT AFTER THE FALL pushed the progressive side further. THROUGH THE HOURGLASS continues that move, although the biggest change […]
Lord Elephant come from Florence and have been making instrumental heavy psych since 2016. Their second full-length, Ultra Soul, is a seven-track slab of doom, blues, stoner rock and psychedelic wandering, released through Heavy Psych Sounds. The big difference from their debut Cosmic Awakening seems to be experience. The band have spent a lot of […]