Lawd. It’s been since 2008 since I last heard Kentucky’s Blackened doom/sludge act Highgate. It was their debut self-titled album on Total Rust Music, and apparently, I really liked it.
Now, since their debut, they have released a couple more albums with Shrines to the Warhead , Black Frost Fallout, and their last album, Survival, back in 2013, but I never got around to hearing those for som reason. Then the band took a bit of a hiatus, only dropping a few singles over the last 13 years.
But here we are on a new label, with a new album. I had to go back and check out the debut, and it’s still an icky, oozing affair that hits the spot. And fans will be happy to hear that not much has changed in the Highgate camp.
The trio still delivers a blackened sludge/doom mix that taps into a blacker Crowbar or Negative Reaction, Primitive Man, Cough, Eyehategod, Wolvhammer, Beldam, etc. But one thing that jumped out to me was the new shiny, but still neurotic, fuzzed-out production, which is immediately apparent on the crawling, loping opening throes of the first track, “Terraforming Hell”, before it briefly transforms into a feral, snarling black metal gallop.
Other than the killer production, there are still the pained howls and blackened rasp of the vocals of the Porter brothers, the throbbing bass, and ample, droning, drawn-out moments of tense, paranoia-inducing atmospheres. But the emphasis is still heavily geared towards fuzzy, festering crawls that make you itch and squirm, not the warmer fuzzy stylings of their more stoner-y cousins.
The likes of “Deceiver”, the almost 10-minute spiral into dread, “The Writhing Dawn”, or the perfectly titled closer “At Paranoia’s Poison Door”, will have your teeth falling out and your skin festering as you scratch and twitch like a meth addict having the DTs.
