Archive for Doom

Slomo – The Bog (Important) 2008

Posted in Doom, Drone, Music, Slomo with tags , , , on April 7, 2013 by noisenoisenoise

R-1544775-1227368444

Now here is a band that should be much more well known than they are. Towards the end of last year they released their new record The Grain and when I found out, well – let’s just say that I was pretty excited. You see Slomo have released two of my favourite records – 2005’s The Creep and The Bog which came out on Important in 2008. Since then though, nothing, absolutely fuck all until now  of course. But first I think  The Bog is worth bringing to people’s attention. I reckon it may be  one of the strangest things that Important ever  released. Slomo are a duo from England who specialise in a slow moving, doom/ambient/creepy vibe – think what it would sound like if Mike Connelly asked Steven O’Malley to help out on a Failing Lights record. The band describe their sound as highly ritualised glumbient. I love the term glumbient but it may not quite encapsulate how sinister the music can be. The album itself is a  one hour long meditation in blackened dreamscapes and the threat of the unseen. I don’t listen to that much doom or black metal anymore but The Bog has been something I have gone back to  again and again. If you stumble over a copy on your travels it might just be worth picking up.

Leave a comment »

Nadja – Touched (Alien 8 Records) 2007

Posted in Doom, Drone with tags , , , on July 25, 2010 by noisenoisenoise

Nadja are a duo of Aiden Baker and Leah Buckereff. This version of Touched is a re-recording of their debut CD with an untitled track as an added extra. I haven’t really dabbled with Nadja too much because, well have a look at their Discogs page, they’re more prolific than Merzbow. Nadja’s is a sound I return to from time to time – a compelling intersection of doom metal, post rock, drone and dark ambience. It’s like Sunn O))) and Mogwai jammed over some heroin and decided to record the output. This is a big sound,  which is unsurprising given that it was mastered by Khanates James Plotkin. When I play it I really enjoy it and doom is  really the only metal I can listen to without laughing. If you love that sound then this is a great example of it.

Leave a comment »

Black Boned Angel – Verdun (Riot Season) 2009

Posted in Birchville Cat Motel, Black Boned Angel, Doom, Music, New Zealand Bands with tags , , , , , on July 21, 2009 by noisenoisenoise

REPOSECD020

As some of you may know, Campbell Kneale, Mr Birchville Cat Motel himself hung up his feline moniker at the end of last year to focus on his new project Our Love will Destroy The World. The good news is that his side project Black Boned Angel continues to go on strongly. I was a huge fan of his BCM project yet had never dabbled with  Campbell’s drone-metal project, Black Boned Angel, a trio of Wellington musicians which includes James Kirk and Jules Desmond.. Fuck knows why really because I absolutely loved BCM’s Bird Sister Blasphemy. This, the band’s latest release on the awesome Riot Season, is an absolute gem. In fact it may be one of the finest doom records I have ever heard. The album itself lists three tracks but they are pressed as one continuous track. The titles references the battle of Verdun during World War One which claimed 250 000 lives. The thing I find interesting about the title is how tragic, military misadventures are a huge feature of schooling in the Antipodes and battles such as Gallipoli are etched into the psyche of most Australians and New Zealanders. Our understanding of  war is sober, without glory and critical of the folly of war.  In listening to Verdun it makes sense that the conflict is scored through crunching Sunn O))) riffs and futile drones. What lifts this above your average drone record is the addition of an operatic chorus belting out Wagnerian funereal hymns underneath the wall of crushing guitars. The effect is magic and somehow a natural fit for the horror that was Verdun. This record comes across a lot like Gorecki’s Misere on steroids. Riot Season are only releasing 1000 copies of this and you’d be smart to get one before they sell out.  One of the best albums of 2009 so far.

3 Comments »

Sunn O))) – Monoliths and Dimensions (Southern Lord) 2009

Posted in Doom, Sunn with tags , , on June 5, 2009 by noisenoisenoise

51C8hmkeO9L._SL500_AA240_

I’ve been hanging out for this for some time because nothing says happiness like a slab of doom laden black metal. This is their first proper album in yonks, since I think Black One if I’m not mistaken (I don’t think  you can count Oracle because that was tracks developed for an art piece rather than an album proper). I was actually going into my local record store to buy Isis’s Oceanic and fuck me if this wasn’t sitting in the rack below. It made my week and after a couple of spins its time to post on it.

You know its Sunn O))) so it’s bound to be good but I wasn’t expecting this. There are four tracks in all. The first and third are your typical Sunn O))) power riffs and the first one had Atilla talking about some underground city or such nonsense in his best creepy voice. They haven’t been this much fun since My Wall on White 1. Fun but sinister of you know what I mean. Maybe it is a bit vaudeville for many tastes but I’m  a sucker for this type of thing so bring it on I say. The second track is called Big Church and it features a choir, a fucking CHOIR I tell you. More Gorecki Misere than Mormon Tabernacle if you are worried that the sound of a choir is completely lame. Totally different to anything they’ve done before I reckon but the final expectation destroying clusterfuck happens on the final track. It starts off as a typical doom track and then fuck me! a fucking trumpet wails and suddenly your listening to jazz. I thought my ipod had fucked up but seriously the most divine jazz track I’ve heard in some time (which isn’t that profound because the only jazz I listen to is The Necks) leaks our of my headphones. To say that Sunn O))) don’t do the same thing twice might be the fucking understatement of the year. If you’re looking for the windswept-tundra-in-hell vibe of Black One you are certainly not going to find it here. Sunn O))) let the light in and it’s a cracking good listen.

3 Comments »

%d bloggers like this: