Olde Growth - Olde Growth

As the years go on and I become an older, somewhat wiser man, at least I think I’m getting to that point, I can’t hep but wonder what band will be next to “part the red sea”. In previous years it’s been bands such as Sleep, Bongripper, Sunn O))), Om and Wormrot. In the more recent months it’s been outfits such asShroud Eater, Meth Drinker, Mühr and Verwüstung. These bands have impacted my life in ways that most really never will, honestly. So, should I still be looking for the next project to literally split me in half? Sure why not! The last spot I expected to look was Boston, MA, not because I dislike every professional sports team from Boston but because it’s never been a city that hit me with crushing doom/sludge etc.. Olde Growth is a two piece that lit me the hell up once I heard the opening track from their self-titled full-length, “Olde Growth”. Trust me when I say prepare for a war of war drums and classic groove because this these two dudes will not let you down for once second.

When I speak about “parting the red sea” as Mosses did, I speak of opening up my heart and hitting spots that nobody else can do musically. It’s a feeling that I get when the hair on my neck rise and I get chill bumps from head to toe. Few records have actually accomplished this but it seems like only certain record can in theory. The opening to this record is a track titled “The Grand Illusion”, not only does it bring that really aggressive and dirty sludge/stoner vibe but the chorus is untouchable. The way this record sounds, the volumes that it can hit and how intense it can be at times, it sounds like a four or five piece playing, not a two piece. The powerful riffs that Stephen LoVerme plays with his bass are similar to what it probably sounded like when the Titanic hit the iceberg. Just gritty, disgusting, deep tones and chords that would shatter your grandfathers ears if you put this record on for him. When I think of certain tracks on this record I can picture ships at sea, people enjoying the sun and just having life as perfect as possible. On the other hand, yes we always have the other hand, I can see dark, chaotic, uprisings of people feeling empowered and just taking what they desire in life. The lyrics to the track “Life In The Present” are something that will make you dream of marvelous surrounding and adventure that you would actually consider trying.

Down and out, dry and heaving. Loss of hope, anguish. Being in time, ford the crossing. Choose to live, break the cycle. Your own mortality will set you free! Scale the highest mountain. Sail across the sea. Ride the steeds of lighting. Swim beneath the clouds. Feast upon the succulent flesh of the Earth! Souls drift on cosmic waves. Light of a thousand candles. Burns through the eternal night!

Previously I said something about war drums, the patterns and authority Ryan Berry can lay out is honestly, in my opinion, the blueprint to how stoner/sludge is suppose to sound like from behind the kit. It’s in your face, full of just raw power but also has this bluesy feel to it at certain sections of the record. “Olde Growth” is just energetic, full of balls and a record that just makes you feel great about whatever is going on in your life at that time. It’s not a record that you wanna put on to feel depressed or apathetic, if you want that put on some Worship or Funeral Moth. Olde Growth are pushing buttons in all the right ways, that’s just a fact and it’s how I feel.

As I right this, the record is literally blasting through my subs that are connected to my laptop. I’ve had a massive headache since yesterday and even though it calmed down a bit last night, it’s back in full force today. That being said, that’s how much I dig this record, even with a throbbing headache it’s still slamming my face and brain all day long. In closing, all I can say is that if this debut full-length from two Boston guys can make me jump for joy for anything Boston, we might have hope for the future in me not having the Boston Bruins.

1) The Grand Illusion
2) Life In The Present

3) Cry of the Nazgul/The Second Darkness/To the Black Gate
4) Sequoia

5) Red Dwarf

6) Everything Dies

7) Awake

Download the record here

Assyrian - Self-Portrait

Over the last couple of months, if not years, I've been wondering where all of the talented Mexican metal bands are. We're heard a couple over the years in such outfits as Brujeria and Infinitum Obscure but nothing that really stuck to me and made me want more Mexico metal. Blasting out at me at speeds unimaginable is a little project called Assyrian. Playing that Atmospheric Progressive/Death/Doom on the same platform as Opeth, Assyrian could easily be heavy hitters in the metal scene. All they need is a record label that would support them fully.They already have a solid fan base and with the intensity they bring on record, it's a real mind fuck how this four piece hasn't been signed to a record label at all.


So, this EP was giving to me nearly a week or so ago and it's literally taken me a full week to understand how I feel about this record. At first I was sort of iffy because it sounded just like some Opeth rip-off. As time passed and this record was blasting on and off through the weekend, I realized that these guys can really bring the heat when it comes to clean vocals and riffs that will make you feel like heaven has opened up. Imagine the cleanness that Opeth gives you, the brilliant epic songs that fill all your needs when it comes to rawness and just progressive death. Assyrian is sort of like that but a whole different breed of wolf. Packing a punch that would knock a fat woman off the back of a horse, it's literally track after track of beautiful chords, amazing piano sections and some solos that will make your head explode in glory. "Self-Portrait" is a record that has seven great tracks that span over the time of twenty-eight minutes. The great thing about this record is that Assyrian are never scared to show who they really are. They will never play something different to just try to impress the listener nor will they go in a direction they have no idea about. They play straight forward progressive death, the type of progressive death that make the trees shake, the type of progressive death that will make you thank God above for blessing you with such a talented band to listen to. As much as I enjoy the growls and the grunts, the clean vocals are something that make this record brilliant. From the softer sections on the track "The Gray" to the amazing melodies on "Quiet", the sixth tracks. It's all just beautiful, heart warming music that I wish everyone could hear, honestly. My favorite track on this record has to be "Empathic Narcissus", it gives me that doom/death I need but also feeds me this solo around the two minute mark, that solo builds and blasts into this Japanese/Korean style melody that reminds me of a Korean Rock band that goes by the name Seo Taiji. It's probably the most glorious thing I've heard since the first time I made my ex-girlfriend orgasm. Yes, it's that glorious that I can compare it to a female orgasming.

Solid record from a Mexican progressive death/doom outfit that should be making more noise than they are in the metal world. People need to open up some ears because we can't keep letting acts like this slip under the rug. If I have to do it alone, I will but Assyrian needs to be hear, period. Global domination? We can only hope with how beautiful this record is.

* ALL TRACKS ARE IN .WAV FORMAT SO YOU WILL HAVE TO DOWNLOAD EACH SONG INDIVIDUALLY!!

1) Impromptu

2) Empathic Narcissus

3) The Gray

4) Colour Me

5) Phobos

6) Quiet

7) Bright Green Light

Shroud Eater - ThunderNoise

Somewhere in a tiny shed towards the shores of Florida's beautiful coast line, a creature with monstrous fangs and rabid claws dwells. Never seeing the light of day, you would think it was a night hunter that will only sneak up on his prey, right? They call this demonic creature Shroud Eater, and earlier this year that beast released one hell of a record titled "ThunderNoise". Scratching and clawing their way through the streets of Miami, FL, Shroud Eater has overcame some amazing battles on the way to releasing this record. Being an unsigned band, a three piece and coming from Florida, where the metal scene seems to be flooded with death/tech-death projects. Shroud Eater has proven that you can be a three piece doom outfit from Florida and make moves so loud that it separates mountains.

As you walk down the sidewalk of any random street in a big city you'll see concrete covered in dry blood, filth and just ugliness. "ThunderNoise" gives you that sense of big city dreams except with a huge flavor of southern spice. Very gritty bass lines that sound as if they are echoing from the depths of hell itself. Janette Valentine does an amazing job at keeping her sections fresh, full of excitement and pretty much a never ending cycle of kick ass. The guy behind the kit, Felipe Torres, can also bring some massive volumes that fit in perfectly to this thunderous record. The way he slams the snare and uses that kick drum is something like I've never heard on a sludge/doom record before. He puts soul into his playing and thinks about each and every pattern, at least to me it seems that way. Jeannie Saiz, the vocalist and guitarist for this hell bound of a project, is simply phenomenal from beginning to end, also. Her voice has that rough, southern woods type feel to it that most men, let alone woman can get while screaming. "ThunderNoise" provides eleven tracks spanning over a forty-three minute length, trust me when I say it's the perfect length. The record doesn't overstay it's welcome nor does it leave you begging for me. When I say it doesn't make you beg for more, it will but you'll get your fill with one full spin of the record, no doubt about that. Another great thing about "ThunderNoise" is that even though it sets moods of southern cooking, fireworks, BBQ and just family acting a little crazy while drinking a bit, you still get the very clean guitar riffs. The opening to the track "Shark Valley" is something I would think I would hear in a Tool track, honestly. It's refreshing to hear a sludge/doom outfit use some clean riffs but also remember their roots in the filthiness.

Picture this if you will; as you prepare for a long day, you walk outside and smell the burning of what seems to be trees. You also smell the fresh air as the birds sing. knowing that today will be an amazing day. You think to yourself, "Is there anything that could make this day better?", finally it hits you, Shroud Eater! Pop that record in or hit play on your iPod and let's get this day on with because nothing screams "amazing day" like some Shroud Eater.

1) High John The Conqueror

2) Vesuvius

3) Cyclone

4) Shark Valley

5) We Are Beasts

6) Descent From The Summit

7) Oubliette

8) Baying Of Jackals

9) Sinister Hunt

10) Hands That Prey

11) Pale Rider

Download the record here

Suffer - Lone

* Record Suggested By Sleazy Kay A

If anyone reads this that really knows me or talks to me on a regular basis, you should know that the more chaotic a record is, the faster I'll fall in love with it. It's the fact that records, such as Suffer's "Lone", really show me that you can be insanely all over the place but still make a record sound like it all makes sense. The perfect example is Wormrot, anything those guys put out just consumes me and takes over my ears for a solid month. Hell, the new Wormrot record, "Dirge", has been played over five hundred times since it was put up for free download. True, it's only eighteen minutes in length but it's monstrous. Anyways, the reason I'm putting this in the review is simply because Suffer is starting to have that effect on as well.

The urge to just destroy everything in my home, set fires to the neighbors animals and just cleanse this whole fucking earth of it's filth and sludge, that's what this record does to me. Ripping riffs from the guitars, you know, the ones that make you wanna quit playing any instrument you've practiced for several years. Yeah, those kind of riffs. Drum patterns that are sometimes so off beat it makes no sense but the enjoyment I get out of hearing them is completely beyond me. Suffer - Australian powerviolence that will give you unforgiving force and drive. "Lone" provides twelve tracks of very aggressive, fast paced tunes that will have you wanting to beat your own skull against a concrete block. With the tracks that are on this record you won't be getting flowers and bright blue skies. Suffer offers you hate, filth, disgust, decay and dismay, except it's not on a golden plate, it's on a fresh skull that has it's top cut off so you can see the brain still pulsing. I can't complain about the length of the record nor can I complain about the length of any of the tracks but I can complain about one thing. The one thing that I can complain about isn't really a complaint after all, it's more a compliment if you ask me. The only thing I ask for with the next release, give me more tracks. Twelve tracks is plenty but for a hungry fucking asshole who loves powerviolence or crust punk, I need more like 20 or so tracks. See, more like a compliment rather than a complaint. Another huge plus about this record is that nearly half way through it, you get a massive five minute long track in "Drown". Prepare for a more slowed down powerviolence, the great feedback and of course, angry dudes that just want to rape and pillage everything in sight. Five full minutes of just pounding, ripping and lovely torture is just what I need on a Sunday afternoon.

Final verdict is that this record is something you don't want to fuck with. It has the intensity of a million warriors from China, the integrity of a thousand mothers that have had their daughters kidnapped and the rawness of a cow that just got skinned. So, if I was you, I would download this record and blast it at full volume so you can make everything surrounding you explode.

1) Away

2) In My Face

3) No Time To Coexist

4) Destroy_Amuse

5) Drown

6) Shutdown

7) Force Fed

8) Manipulated

9) Lone

10) Numbered

11) Veins

12) Breed

Download the record here

Vinterland - Welcome My Last Chapter

It's Sunday morning, 6 a.m. to be exact, and temperatures have been hitting the high 90's, low 100's here in Arkansas. As the sun crushes all of our fun for the summer, as always, we can only hope and pray that the world will turn into an iceberg. The fan in my room keeps me somewhat cool but not to the point that Satan himself will cool off. Where am I going with this scenario you ask? A little band that goes by the name Vinterland, of course. The one band besides Immortal, Bathory or Burzum that can turn my heat filled days into tundras of solid ice. Putting their Swedish mark on the black metal scene back in '96 with a record titled "Welcome My Last Chapter", we have yet to see what this band is doing beside their other project, The Black.

Mystical worlds that embody the freezing rivers, snow covered landscapes and thousands of caves that keep the humans warm enough to stay alive in the middle of the night. A record that has this much integrity and guts should be looked upon as one of the classics. "Welcome My Last Chapter" delivers on all cylinders, giving you the huge influence of second wave black metal but with more melodies. I know it sounds like something you may not enjoy but trust me, it's a record that will ice your heart over ten fold. Piano sections so marvelous  that it echos through the trees of a decaying forest while you try to stay warm by that fire with the other worthless humans that are traveling with you. In some sense of it all, vampiric struggles seem to be a pretty large part of the lyrics. Covering situations such as trying to find blood to quench the thirst of the man in the lyrics to just consuming the forest on a dark winter night so he can feel as one with his surroundings. 

From the track "Still The Night Is Awake" - "Still the night is awake, like a black candle that's all around. To go from dusk from here, I walk thirsty for blood. Thirsty for blood. Still the night is awake, with the dead I spread my wings. Now the realm is here, come with me?"

Illusions of dark rituals also seem to bash the side of your brain as this record is playing. The classic situation of cult leaders walking through the forest with torches as they hunt for the people that escaped their grasp nearly minutes earlier. You can hear the wolves crying in the background as these merciless souls are trying to find any kind kind of hope in the winter, snow filled woods. The best part about this record is that's really, in a weird way, ahead of it's time. The black metal we hear today is mainly filled with melodic riffs and little to zero time signatures. Vinterland was doing this all back in the mid 90's, except they put acoustic sections and time signatures into their tracks.

Think of it this way, when the mainstream talks about the best metal/hard rock acts of all time, Rush isn't usually on the list and if they are they seem to be pretty low on the list. Vinterland is the Rush of black metal, it's that simple. Many would rather give crowns to bands like Immortal, Darkthrone, Celtic Frost, Bathory, Burzum and even Carpathian Forest but in the tradition that I work in, I give one to Vinterland. I'm not taking anything away from those great bands mentioned above but Vinterland deserves to be in the discussion along with those great acts.

1) Our Dawn Of Glory

2) I'm An Other In The Night

3) So Far Beyond...(The Great Vastforest)

4) A Crystal So Crystal Clear

5) As I Behold The Dying Sun

6) Vinterskogen

7) Still The Night Is Awake

8) A Winter Breeze

9) Wings Of Sorrow

Download the record here

Meth Drinker - Meth Drinker

Have you ever put a record on and thought to yourself, "Since when did people inside insane asylums get to use instruments and why does it sound so fucking great?". If you have thought that, believe me when I say you are not alone in this because when I listen to Meth Drinker's self-titled debut full-length "Meth Drinker", I get the same exact thoughts. Stampeding out of New Zealand like a hoard of buffalo, Meth Drinker just recently got together last year and have already put out a solid, boy do I mean solid, record that will blow everything you love out of the water. A release that was brought to my attention by Miss Sarah, it's a good thing she showed me this because my jaw hit the floor after I heard a couple songs. Think of it this way, if "Meth Drinker" had black magical spells, your whole record collection would be melted in a matter of seconds.

Villages filled with the craziest of humans, the type of humans that kill and eat raw flesh for the hell of it. Straight jackets, rooms filled with the stench of vomit while the people that work at the hospital just walk right through it. Crucifixes that get flipped upside down while the lightning strikes the trees to cause a power outage. Images of souls being tortured while they're strapped on surgery beds with nothing to look forward too. All of these images and atmospheres are really what set this record apart from so many other doom/sludge releases. It could be the samples that are played on certain tracks but just the overall vibe you get from "Meth Drinker" are straight out of a haunted insane asylum. As the bass will shake your glass of water, the drums fill in very nicely with it's mid-paced tempo. The grooves and riffs are just the right pace too, they aren't super slow so that the not so average listen will get bored but they aren't so upbeat that the normal doom lover will get turned off. "Combat Shock", the fourth track on the record, starts off with a woman wondering about how her family is going to survive without her son, from what I gathered, having no job or life. She goes on to slip shit on him and you get the feeling once the sample cuts out that nothing good became of that situation. Murder? Suicide? Mass Murder? We can only imagine what happens after that sample because the way that the rest of the track takes you over, you sort of get the feeling that both of those bodies are laying somewhere face down, possibly in a sewer underneath the city. As simple as this record is, the way it comes out and makes you feel like you're sort of part of this world that never existed, it makes you want to listen and pay attention. Speaking of greatness, besides the name of the band, you get these little samples of 70's disco, at the end of "Combat Shock", and a great country sample that seems to be from the 60's at the end of the track "Broken Down and Used Up". Crazy things cross through your mind while you listen to this record, the thought of actually rocking back and forth seemed to cross my mind quite a bit. "Meth Drinker" just makes you wanna do things that no other record can do, at least for me.

It's all about the atmosphere on this debut record from Meth Drinker and if they keep putting records out like this insane piece of shit, we may have some guys that could crush the doom/sludge scene with their bare palms. Call me crazy, call me an idiot, you could even call me a worthless piece of shit for digging a band called Meth Drinker, all I know is that this record has impacted me and it will be in that discussion when Sarah and I talk about 2011's top records.

1) Deprivation

2) Incurable Illness

3) Ganja Mutt

4) Combat Shock

5) Skull Smashing Concrete

6) The Shining (Main Title)

7) Serrated Corridor

8) Narco Sub

9) Broken Down and Used Up

Download the record here

Cursed Ruin - Goat Urine

You know, the black metal scene in the last couple of years has really disappointed me. Very few bands are actually putting out records that sound like black metal. I don't need blast beats and so much distortion it makes the record horrible. Plus, I'm a very firm believe that black metal sounds a shit load better with low-fi production that can set a scene of Satan filled destruction and horror. Cursed Ruin seems to have figured that out in their 2010 demo, "Goat Urine", great title by the way. Haling from Jacksonville, FL, where the black metal scene seems to be raving and growing more and more over the years, they fit right at home with this release.

Dwelling deep inside the dark hallways of a haunted mansion, you can feel the wind brush upon your neck as it whips in from the cracked window in the kitchen. As the pictures on the wall start to shake, you get this overwhelming sense that something is about to happen and you don't like what it could be. The smells of burning flesh as screams from Hell below fill the air you breath, you hear loud drums from the servants that are coming to take you prisoner. The way this demo has really low-fi production, it's able to set atmospheres and turns your surroundings into dark, twisted images very quickly. You can picture the demons flying high in the midnight sky as lightning strikes down and it pours with no sign of letting up. "Goat Urine" is a four track demo snapping over the length of eighteen minutes, the perfect length for your mind to start playing tricks on your until you bash your own skull in with anything that's in reach. Cursed Ruin seems to have went way back with the influences on this release, looking more in the direction of "Transilvanian Hunger"/"Under A Funeral Moon" era of Darkthrone and even elements that "Grom" by the almighty Behemoth gave us. "Necro-Pedophile Priest", the forth track on the demo, might be my favorite on the record. It has this drum beat that never quits, the vocal work reminds me of some voodoo chant that you would find deep in the south of Louisiana and the distortion is just perfection to what Cursed Ruin are bringing to the table.

I won't sit here and tell you that this is the best black metal record to ever exist or it blows everything out of the water, blah blah blah. I will tell you though that it's a decent record filled with haunting tempos, great and I mean great vocal work to creep the hell out of you and it's filled with four solid tracks that are nothing but pure black metal. "Goat Urine" is what black metal's suppose to sound like, that's just a fact.

1) Cross Nailer

2) Cacophony Of Pure Black Emotion

3) Forest of Thornes

4) Necro-Pedophile Priest

Download the record here