Nashville, Tennessee’s Laser Flames on the Great Big News may not have an easily digestible name but their motor revving, road ready blend of proto-metal guitar grandeur, infectious vocal trade-offs between Stevie Bailey (guitar/vocals) and John Judkins (guitar vocals), rough n’ tumble punk-inspired rhythms, psychotic murder metal touches and the auxiliary keyboard support of producer […]

Like an Ennio Morricone soundtrack meets Goblin and Zombi with liberal sprinkles of Inter Arma, Grim Ravine, Graves at Sea, Black Sabbath, Icepick Revival, Indian, Soulpreacher, Rwake, Swedish/Finnish gloom and an unholy, nail you to a cross of shame sludge attitude; Ottawa’s trio Longhouse have dropped a fearlessly frightening sludge-themed album that not only adheres […]

Vancouver butcher Graham MacSkimming has crafted a pretty impressive underground resume.  As a vocalist he channels Reagers’ era Vitus with an eerie tonality and violent vocal schizophrenia in sludge/doom overlords Witchsnake and he’s had his hands in seminal death/thrash/punk cultists Violent Christ, Ligeia and several other projects that are well-worth a listen.  Vile Ent is […]

Not to be confused with Georgia’s excellent, psychotic sludgers Crawl, the Crawl in question here is a one man blackened sleaze sludge project helmed by one sicko that plays bass, drums and vocals.  The fact that organic instruments are used yet filtered through relentless torrents of distortion gives the record an industrial feel akin to […]

Virginia’s Lord consistently make a big bastardly liar out of me.  Ever since the band’s 2011 landmark album Chief, a tangled and complex tapestry of twisted backwoods butcher metal, Lord continues to up their game with each new album.  An ever-changing line up soldiered on through the vermin bitten EP Alive in Golgotha and it […]

Running Billie Holiday’s “Gloomy Sunday” through a grinder of screeching, white-washed noise is how Floridian filth merchants Ether get their kicks on opener “Dearest the Shadow,” a hint at the oddball, angular quirks to come.  The band’s 2nd LP There is Nothing Left for me here is a craggy, down the mountain plummet of doom-y, […]

Cacti blowing by in the distance at 90 mph on an open desert road, Camaro pushing the engine to the breaking point and the unholy grasp of mescaline taking control…we must be in California?  We certainly aren’t because quartet Fire Down Below and their debut Viper, Vixen, Goddess, Saint is straight from the hidden Sahara […]

Finland’s sickest sludgy scum grinders who happen to have a penchant for Norwegian darkness are back with their 7th full-length release since 1998…and that’s not counting the mountain of demos, splits and EPs that punctuated the interim between albums.  My introduction was the split with Bud Junkees (and even though I dig these guys too), […]

Iowa City depression sludge fuckers Aseethe make Grief look like a party band.  That’s not to say that their abilities are quite up to the feral hope rape of bands like Noothgrush, Grief, Burning Witch, Toadliquor, Dystopia, Wellington, etc., just yet but with their latest full-length gruel platter Hopes of Failure they are registering as […]

Brand new and prolific to boot, one man Australian blackened thrashers Doomcave (led by Aiden Vestgaard) are set to not only release an EP The Fires of Torment but also the full-length subject of this review Woebegone in 2017.  Melding melodic lead cadences with wolf-hearted blasts, schizophrenic vocals (psychotic and clean), synthetic grandeur, revolting black/thrash […]

  I was born in ’82, so while I was learning my ABCs Wino was already crafting a canon of masterpieces that still stand the test of time today.  The man has absolutely nothing to prove; reinventing himself from a hard livin’, outlaw doom rock n’ roll demon to a solo bluesman while exploring every […]

  Australian duo Dead minored in Big Business, majored in KARP and went for a full masters’ degree in The Melvins.  We won’t let you Sleep is the band’s third album installment in what they are officially dubbing as The Trilogy (a big time Melvins nod right there).  With honorable guest appearances from Kevin Rutmanis […]

This one took a couple of listens to fully absorb and I honestly wasn’t too sure how I felt about it at first.  UK alley prowlers Morass of Molasses play a rough n’ tumble hand of stoner rock and hardcore with stylistic left turns into trippy psychedelia, sludge, doom and a Pantera/Kilgore/Pissing Razors’ hewn modern […]

Any band that uses the line, “Take a drink, before the drink takes you,” immediately scores a few points in my book.  That’s a damn good, witty line appearing in the title track that I wish I thought of.  UK’s crusty, hardcore sludgers Widows just checked my king and smashed the chessboard over my head.  […]

Sometimes when reading reviews of more unusual, angular “sludge” records, I swear the only two bands people have heard and can use as points of reference are Baroness and Mastodon (High on Fire a close but distant third).  Hey, call a spade a spade if that’s what you hear but sometimes I feel that writers […]

Though labeled simply as “doom/stoner” metal, Texan duo Cursus deliver an album that plays out more akin to an expansive, ever-changing soundtrack as opposed to a collection of headbanging riff-y groove assaults.  Those looking for instant gratification might not make it past the first track but those hunting for an explorative exercise in atmosphere (that […]

  Finland’s Demonic Death Judge is one of those bands that attracted me on name alone.  Their debut LP The Descent was the first one that I heard and it made me an instant kneeler at their altar of godless, unholy sludge.  The Judge’s sound is steeped in filthy bayou blues with the dirty, metallic […]

Living around the Pittsburgh area means the spoils of heavy, overcast riff rock are always within my reach.  The area around me seems to be thriving harder than ever in terms of punishing rock n’ roll groove and here to set that example in concrete is Monolith Wielder.  This mutinous crew of scene vets aren’t […]

Black Bow Records strike again with another coffin slab of night black madness, this time with London’s sludge-coated, blackened d-beaters Deadwound. Identity Shapes is the band’s debut; five cuts of internal organ rearranging madness with unorthodox structures, melodies and madness. The clearly picked lead licks have a weird Duane Denison tonality (Jesus Lizard, Tomahawk, etc.) […]

Released in 2015, England’s pissed off metal crew Bloodyard and their second EP Darker Rage is just making the review rounds now since they’re fresh off a festival appearance. Word has it that they are prepping a brand new release and there’s always excitement to be had whenever you discover a band that you’ve never […]

Toxic, polluted scum sludge from the UK usually always meets or exceeds my expectations and this brain-rotted quintet from Portsmouth serve up just the kind of humanity hatin’ nihilism that I can always get behind. After a corrosive EP, Grim Ravine drops an LP with just as many tracks. The Light is from Below is […]

From the late 60s carrying through into modern times, Germany, has been a hotbed for hard-edge experimental music. Be it the throttling Hammond organs and aggressive soul vocals of Birth Control’s Sabbath meets Doors styled subsonics, the snarling post-punk of Neu!, Spancer’s twin bassed sludge sprawl or Black Wasteland’s roaring thrash doom…let’s put it this […]

TOTD’s very own E. Thomas, knowing my affinity for mangled metallic crust punk, tipped me off on Scottish quartet Razor Sharp Death Blizzard…and I’ll be goddamned if he didn’t have my face nailed up on a wanted poster for this one. These nuts bring crust, hardcore and Am-Rep/Touch and Go noise-rock tonalities to the table […]

Featuring Michael Gilpatrick on bass and Chadd Beverlin on drums (both of Ohio solar sludge titans Mockingbird), Enhailer’s debut LP Grisaille is a bad trip through the bad lands full of psychedelic tonalities, dry heaving riffs and shattering rhythmic shifts that break Tectonic plates like teeth.  To keep my own personal record straight, Mockingbird didn’t […]

Cleveland’s finest purveyors of the riff, Contra, busted my nose up with brass knuckles in the form of 2015’s Son of Beast EP.  A storm n’ swell of throttling blues riffs and homing missile rhythms, the instrumental trio comprising members of some of my favorite Ohio heavies were off to a greater than excellent start.  […]