Futurat ~ Reality Emulation ( Saint Petersburg, Russia)
Bellicose riffs asphyxiated in fuzz detonates with a garage rock type sneer. Caustic leads dipped in strychnine, claw and bite, carried along by a rhythm that pounds to a pulp the acid scorched remains from this squall of doom leaden, incendiary songs. There really is no let up from the fuzz leaden assault throughout the album and if the massive heft of riffery doesn't finish you off, then the Japanese freakout style of jams will. Reality Emulation by Futurat is one of those finds that makes you lie prostate in worship at the foot of the Bandcamp Altar!
Grandmother ~S/T Known only by those who aren't afraid to lurk in the areas of metal most fear to inhabit, Grandmother is an Australian band that released a couple of demo's before unleashing this heaving monstrosity of an EP upon humanity. There is minimal information about Grandmother, in fact, I don't even know if the band still survives. A seething morass of hate swimming in a tide of churning doom, making your skin crawl and spine tingle with the heviosity of it all. Encrusted sludge clings to drone seeping from impenetrable riffs, all joy swiped away by a vile hand leaving you wallowing in misery. If ever doom/sludge became an entity capable of decimating all life on Earth, then Grandmother is Patient Zero, a pariah that should walk before the lepers bell.
Duskwood ~ The Long Dark Formed in 2012, Duskwood are a 4 piece desert/stoner rock band from Yeovil (UK). 'The Long Dark' is part 1 of a 3 EP saga telling the story of a space cowboy travelling alone through space and time observing and documenting large planets, lifeforms and structures. Their main influence are Kyuss 1000Mods, The Sword and Black Sabbath." The first thing that strikes you when you finish listening to all four tracks on this EP is the shift in style from the 2016 released 'Desert Queen' album. Gone is the desiccated hard driving Kyuss style in favour of the fatter, hazy, lazy, weighed down with fuzz, drifting in orbit style of Samsara Blues Experiment. Psychedelic trippiness is locked within a space vacuum fuelled by booming stoner doom riffs of interplanetary proportions. This is a truly excellent EP and I can't wait to hear about the further exploits of the space cowboy. The Bandcamp link is for 'Desert Queen' as 'The Long Dark' won't be available until 20th April.
Below - St Anthony's Fire Not to be confused with the North Dakota or Pennsylvania Below, this unit was a short lived band out of Kentucky. I can't remember where I stumbled across it, I think there was a download link on the Karmic Swamp Label site somewhere on the net, but boy, am I glad I took the chance and clicked on that damn link because I fell in love with the album. There are some albums that for whatever reason, you just develop a connection with and this is such a record. Four long tracks of out and out doom, ponderous, lethargic but with lengthy trance like jamming passages on most of them. This brand of doom isn't of the warm and anguished Candlemass trends, instead there is a definite herbal essence of the narcotic variety bleeding out of each riff. Sadly, the Kentucky Below was short lived but the band splintered into a couple of awesome bands, Motherplant who I think are on an extended hiatus and but released an awesome self titled album in 2015 that was along similar lines to this but slightly more psychedelic and Hawkbill that had a definitely more aggressive, sludgy nature. This day and age with so much music to discover, its easy to flit from new release to new release and never really GET any of them, but St Anthony's Fire by Below keeps beckoning me and is always close by like a pusher with your next fix.
So difficult to find and I can't find the link anymore but I'm hoping that a member of the Kentucky contingent sees the review and finally decides to get it on Bandcamp where it belongs. Here are the links to Motherplant and Hawkbill.
Electric funeral Five rites of initiation, a Eucharist to the dark side of the doom scene.
As the name of the band suggests, there is more of a nod towards Black Sabbath, the riffs are thick with viscous, moist fuzz, however, in keeping with the style of a lot of doom bands from the Far East, there is more of an antagonistic pulse that permeates throughout this album and contradicts the Gregorian invocations of Satanic scripture particularly from the opening track.
In fact there are many contradictions on Death, Cult and Serpent. On one trackGothic timbre from an organ vies with the delicate vibes from Tingsha bells. The biggest surprise however, comes in the form of the final track and my favourite on the album 'The Offering) Conqueror Worm (The Aftermath). This track is a total departure from the punishing occult doom that takes up most of the album. Its a song of glorious spacey, blues flecked jams that encapsulates both 'Planet Caravan' and 'The Warning' in 18 minutes of meditative contemplation. Death, Cult and Serpent is an album that should be persecuted, tried, then burned at the stake.
