This has been brewing a while. It’s been three years since Year of No Light’s last full-length Ausserwelt and in that time the French soundsmiths have crafted out a new niche for themselves thanks to their collaborative record with thisquietarmy and a split LP with Altar of Plagues. Vampyr sees the band continue an intriguing metamorphosis that began to take place with Ausserwelt, their first album with the current line-up and one that saw them go entirely instrumental, trading vocals in for more layered guitars and a second drummer.

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Hailing from Kentucky, ALL DEAD‘s new record Rise Below could get the party started in a cemetery and have all the zombies head banging! Their new 7 inch is packed with fast demented grooves that will have you spazzing out! Fuck the dumb shit, check out two ALL DEAD tunes below!

Your songs have an anthem quality to them, and I have found myself with Ultraviolet on repeat. Where does that anthem quality stem from?

LP – Thanks. I’m not sure where that exactly stems from — but probably just the love of a good rock song. And punk rock.

PC- For me it is the influence of punk and older hardcore, when I am writing lyrics I like to throw something out there that can stick and hopefully people will be able to relate too. Those kinds of songs were very important to me as kid growing up in the south. If you stood out, you would have to take a lot of shit and it was great to hear music that made me feel that other people felt the same as I did. So i think even as we have grown older and maybe our lyrical matter has matured, that influence is still there and I agree with Laura that I also love a great rock song.

What visual artist – be them painter, illustrator or filmmaker – has had the biggest impact on the band?

LP – I’m not sure that there is “the one” artist that wins over all others. And, I think that would also depend on who in the band you ask. It’s probably safe to say that David Argento, John Carpenter, David Lynch, and Ralph Bakshi have all impacted our band.

PC: Yeah I agree with Laura on all of those, also recently I have been a big fan of a lot of the newer independent film makers there have been some great movies coming out over the last handful of years and in particular I am a big fan of Gaspar Noe’ s work.

Photos: Wicked Ways Photography
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Oxtongue might not be familiar to a lot of my fellow doom-heads, but from here on out they should be. Combining subtle atmospherics with the oft-imitated dirge rumble of Holy Mountain-era Sleep and a crushing, misanthropic fuzz wall is what these Canadian cats are all about. And it works damn well, with “Where The Light Is Mute” winding its way across 31 minutes of acid-dipped grooves and a hollowed, depressing stomp.

The album comes on slowly, with the first five minutes of opener “Humanity: Born In The Way Of Eternal Grief” devoted to a simmering riff backed with subtle whispers and ambient melodic touches. “Humanity…” lurches from one lynchpin groove to the next, the whole mass held together with reverb-drenched shrieks and moans that give a mournful flare to the crushing heaviness. While the riffs at times become a murky edifice of reiteration, they never lose the sense of dynamism that runs like a black vein through this whole album. The tone and timbre of the guitars changes so slowly in spots that, before you’re fully aware, you’ve gone from listening to a chugging bit of repetition to being engulfed in a bongload of atmosphere. And, just as easily, Oxtongue shift into the forceful and infinitely heavy “Anguish: Abide With Suffering,” which sets the same dragging tone as the opening track but follows a much more direct approach. It would have been easy for Oxtongue to take the path that far too many “doom metal” bands have and churn out 15 minute tracks full of bone-dry, Neurosis-aping schlock. Instead, they’ve created something that is at turns groovy, startlingly heavy, and dynamic. Oxtongue manage to strike a near-perfect balance of creativity and nihilism that stretches out into the black edges of emotion that serves as the mark of a truly talented band.

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Label:MusicFearSatan

Are you ready to re-enter a psychedelic state of mind? The split record between Huata and Bitcho will be the perfect companion for your trip to places where gravity has no place and time has no meaning. Three songs from the two bands are paying homage to the psychedelic side of doom, filled with great synth sounds that will make your head spin, dreamy voices and heavy riffs.

So to break it down: Huata contribute two songs to this split album, the fifteen-minute long “The Retaliator,” with its majestic heavy sound, the 60s and 70s influenced groove and the vocals buried deep in the mix, completely out of this world sonic manipulation of synths to create an unworldly ambience that will entrap the listener with its mesmerizing quality. The repetitive themes also assist the hypnotic process; an almost Sleep-ish (from the Jerusalem era) feeling overflows from the song. The second offering of Huata is a heavier, more compact track. Still in the same style but maybe focusing a bit more on their heavy guitars and sludge background than on their psychedelic elements, which are still obviously there (and quite noticeable), but they are not the main focus of the track.

And after the devastation of Huata it is time for Bitcho to take charge and take us further into the realms of psychedelia. Suddenly the warm atmosphere that Huata brought to the album is almost instantly transformed into an industrial-like coldness and after the four minute intro into “10050 Cielo Drive”, Bitcho come out in full force, with their repetitive heavy riffs, bringing Godflesh instantly to mind, and their great synth sounds – they pin you to the floor, especially when the ritualistic chants kick in, you will be astonished. The mechanical beat entwined with the huge sounding riffs and the abnormal atmospheres are key to the sound of Bitcho, the end of the track where the sound becomes more aggressive before they almost triumphantly retreat to an even slower pace is truly awe-inspiring, and the effects on the vocals are also unreal to say the least.
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Label: Forcefield Records

There’s not much to say about Grime. Hailing from Trieste, Italy, these three dudes (they were four before becoming just three) came back in 2013 with their debut record, Deteriorate, their second in a discography that started with the self-titled EP back in 2011.

A quick search on the web will lead us to their facebook page where we can find, almost instantly, the kind of music the Italian trio plays and their goals for the music itself: “Their only goal is bringing destruction to a town near yours. Their sound is rooted into rotten burial ground and their songs are the sound of a decaying swamp filled with trash.”

Sinking our ears into the great (yeah, it is great) Deteriorate shows us a band that knows exactly what it is doing and that can transport us to a parallel universe. A few minutes in the universe of these guys and you will scream in a high-pitch/growl voice “SLUDGEEEEEE!!!!” Oh my fuckin’ god… This is exactly what we fans of old-school sludge needed.

The eight slabs of pure filth and destruction on this album are fuckin’ awesome. A drummer that pounds in your fuckin’ head like Thor with his hammer, a bass player that grooves all way around, a guitar player that delivers only addicting riffs and a vocalist that gives a very GOOD name to the genre… This is how you “sing” when you’re in a fuckin’ SLUDGE band.

What else can I say? Talk about each track? Fuck no. They’re are all great and they are filled with little details that make them unique and the record NOT boring at all… In fact it’s the other way around.

I LOVE THIS SHIT!!!! SLUDDGGGGEEEE!!!!!

CVLT Nation is stoked to bring you the soundtrack for today’s moments of desperation…if you need a furious, raging pick me up, we have it for you: two tracks off the upcoming Old Wounds // Trenchfoot split 7″ which will be breaking down your door on June 18th via Melotov Records. These songs will tear your eardrums a new one! Old Wounds and Trenchfoot will be doing a 6 day tour of the Northeast from June 18th-24th supporting the 7″, alongside Snakes from Michigan. So press play below and get your ass out to one of their shows – stay tuned for the full tour info!

Text and photos: Astrid Tonella

On this sunny beginning of May started the second edition of Heavy Days in Doomtown in Copenhagen, Denmark. The four days DIY sludge/doom/stoner fest who made a massive impression last year is back again, with an incredible line up (five bands performed their first European show ever), bringing fans of “all things slow and heavy” from all over Europe and beyond. For those who are unfamiliar with the festival (?!), HDDT is an event organized by the “Undergrundsmusikkens Fremme” (Underground music Promotion) who has been organizing for several years the now notorious “Kill-town Death Fest”. The concept, which makes this festival so unique, is to bring the DIY principles to the doom/stoner/sludge/psych scenes that are rarely exposed to these ethics and create music and culture without having any profit involved.

Huge congrats to the organizing crew for topping last year’s event, for the top-notch organization and for making this weekend absolutely amazing. With this edition, HDDT really proved that it can compete with other renewed European festivals – so if you haven’t attended yet, this is definitely not the fest you want to miss next year!

DAY ONE
The first day started off very well at Stengade, with a sold out warm-up show enabling the public to visit the art gallery placed on the first floor of the venue. For this edition, HDDT continued in line of last year, adding even more artists to the bill. The artistic dimension is to me a great addition that provides a very unique atmosphere to this festival and showcases artists who also contribute in making the scene something more than “just” music but a culture of its own. For this day, you were able to admire the incredible works of The 13th Sign Collective (D), responsible for the fest’s artwork, Manuel Tinnemans (NL), Timo Ketola (SWE), Sami Hynninen (FIN) and assist to a book reading by Ulrike Serowy, narrated by Mat McNervey from Hexvessel.

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England’s CORRUPT MORAL ALTAR are about to unleash another slap of totally fucked up Grind/Sludge/Death Metal madness upon their willing disciples in the embodiment of a 7″ titled Whiskey Sierra. Just as the name professes I assume all of the material was created under the influence of quite some booze and probably a bunch of other substances as well. And this shows not only in the naming but also in the headache provoking music that is taking only the heaviest, sickest bits of every genre that is already extreme in itself.

By doing so CMA perfectly pursue what they also did on the previous (and excellent) Luciferian Deathcult EP, except that these four obviously very angry men became even tighter and heavier, making Whiskey Sierra an absolutely convincing release that should please the ’83 Napalm Death shirt sporting 40-something guy as much as the 15 year old dude who only recently got introduced to Spazz by his older brother.

The four songs of Whiskey Sierra get straight to the point, hit you in the face, kick the shit out of you and disappear as fast as they came, leaving you as a bloody wreck begging for more. In about ten and a half minutes CMA do really everything it takes to tear your shiny happy world apart. The down-tempo’ish, sludgy parts are wisely placed and mostly leave you only a few seconds to breathe before one of these really ridiculous fast blast-beats bevels your skullcap or a 10.000 ton breakdown beats your head onto the concrete floor. If you still don’t have enough, the dual vocal assault makes sure you feel completely fucked. The high screams ultimately sound like a buch of rusty nails onto a blackboard. Nice eh?

What’s really remarkable about this unhealthy mixture is that CMA have in down like not too many other bands to make all this sound very coherent. At no point you have the feeling that Whiskey Sierra sounds put on or strangely constructed. It’s more like CMA found a way to melt down over 30 years of extreme music and turn it into a merciless, unforgiving sonic mayhem. Try this at your own risk.

This 7″ EP is up for pre-order via Dead Chemist Records.

facebook.com/CorruptMoralAltar

Dixie Dave of Weedeater sits down with Heavy Dicks for the premiere of their show on Noisey, and breaks down his love for Cough Syrup. I’ve got to say, Jake and Fred are on to something – looking forward to seeing future episodes! Back to Weedeater – they will be hitting the road on the east coast starting May 22nd.

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