After a 9-year layoff, California Sludge mongers Armed For Apocalypse returned in 2022 with Ritual Violence, a beastly, hefty album that almost matched their absolutely killer debut, Defeat, waaaaay back in 2009, and that album is still one of my go-to favorites in the style.
With only a 4-year wait, this time, but the same lineup as Ritual Violence, Armed For Apocalypse delivers the goods once again with another massive slab of sludgy doomy metal that will shake your bones.
Whereas the recent sludge effort by Stalemate of Wills missed the mark a little, Highgate who are a litle more black metal sludge, or Tarlung, who leaned a little more into the death/doom side of things, AFA, is straight-up, nasty, crawling, loping sludge metal with nods to Crowbar (albeit less soulful/southern), High on Fire, Conjurer, and of course, other bands they came up with, like Beaten Back to Pure, The Abominable Iron Sloth, and Black Cobra.
I’d venture to say they have a little hardcore in here as well, with some slightly faster gallops here and there, as heard on “Spellbound”, “Lost Without a Light”, “Keep Up Appearances”, and “Lurk”, which even has a blastbeat.
The eleven songs veer away from longer, sometimes atmospheric, sludgy tropes, often getting right the fuck to it, with a couple of tunes barely over 2 minutes, and the longest song being the 6-minute closing title track. But man, they all contain some fucking beefy moments, aided by the crumbling Kurt Ballou production,
Whether it’s the feedback on the opener “Drown”, the absolute beatdown of one of those short tracks, “Spellbound”, sickly lurch and haunting acoustics of “Immortal”, the disgustingly dirgey instrumental “Bathed in a Tepid Pool of My Own Filth”, or even the slightly more introspective closing title track, the whole album drips with grimy menace and heft, making it yet another standout addition to the band’s solid discography.
