There’s always one album in the beginning of the year which I wasn’t expecting and which ends up blowing me completely away. It’s so consistent that I’ve come to expect it by now and, lo and behold, 2020’s iteration has arrived with full fanfare. The Osedax might be a name…
Alright folks, it’s time for yet another doom/psych/stoner release in 2019. Lord knows what it is about this year which is making psychedelic music blow up but blowing up it is. This time, we have Besvärjelsen (“conjuring”), hailing from Stockholm, with their aptly named Frost. On this, their fourth release,…
Each month, we always seem to come to the same conclusion when it comes to our Editors’ Picks column: Friday release days open the floodgates and unleash a seemingly endless stream of quality new music. But while some of our Editors and Contributors sit down gleefully each week to dive into this newly stocked treasure…
When we last left off Chicago doom-prog prodigies Flesh of the Stars, in early 2017, they had just released Anhilla. Anhilla is a glorious piece of work: a high-minded concept album that blended gloomy, introspective doom metal with the spacey and climactic synthesizer theatrics of David Bowie and Pink Floyd,…
The Denver trio Palehorse/Palerider embody the core aesthetics of doomgaze, meticulously crafting sweeping soundscapes ripe with mysticism and guttural power. Layering Brandon Richier’s shimmering guitar work and ethereal vocals over the muscular low end provided by bassist David Atkinson and drummer Nate Marcy, they possess the ability to transport listeners…
Last year, we told you several times to listen to Skullcave, a doom metal band doing extremely interesting things in Australia. It was part of a larger, most excellent year for the continent but Skullcave was the band closest to doom as part of it. Their emphasis on emotive clean…
Sigils delivers their debut, You Built the Altar, You Lit the Leaves, amidst a swirl of psychedelic trudge wrought from Tom Colello’s guitar playing and the often soaring vocals of Salvatore Rex. On the first track, “Samhain”, we are greeted with a lumbering riff that rarely deviates over the song’s…
Greetings, heaviest of Heavy Bloggers! It’s that time of the month once again where we delve into the deepest of fuzzy riffs and slowest of bangers. I have to admit, I both love and hate this time of year when it comes to music. Everyone rushes to get their records…
As I mentioned a few days ago, one of the best things to come from the traditional metal revival, at least for me, is the resurgence of what’s often called “proto-doom”, that kind of slow, thick heavy metal that ruled supreme in the days before the doom genre fully crystallized.…
Preaching restraint in music has become a kind of mantra for me; the more time goes by, the more I’m convinced that the true measure of an artist is what they leave out rather than what they leave in. I don’t mean to by mystical about this. This isn’t some…
