Already home to Gojira and most likely the year’s best blackened feelings metal album (Alcest’s Écailles de Lune) on top of all the other really incredible bands I’ve mentioned previously from the last few years, you have to go and pull some bullshit like producing sludgy doom-obsessed outre-metallers Eibon, trouncing us once again in a department we had once so excelled in. We’re in the middle of the longest economic downturn since the Great Depression and everyone hates everyone here; the least you can do is let us still have our awesome shoegazing sludgy doom bands. But based on the ridiculous excellence of Eibon’s debut full length, Entering Darkness, it’s apparent that you guys are gonna be dicks about this, too.

On paper, Eibon are the exact kind of band we don’t need: familiar with doom and sludge metal, prone to decidedly non-metal tangents, big on long crescendos. But in execution… good God, is it phenomenal. Eibon get the heavy part down with aplomb; borrowing liberally from sludge, doom, and occasionally black metal (the glowering title track tips its hat to fellow countrymen Merrimack, in particular), the band don’t leave one wanting in terms of crushing riffs.

Continue reading: MetalSucks » Blog Archive » ENTERING DARKNESS: EIBON’S SLIDES FROM THEIR TRIP TO HELL.

I’d imagine the first thing that’s going to garner attention are the blast beats. Layered over some droning slabs of guitar noise and a post-rock inspired arpeggios, they really aren’t that out of place, and in the world of heavy music, where bringing more and more seemingly disparate elements together into a coherent form is often the raison d’etre, it was only a matter of time before the blast beat started to gain more prominence outside of death, grind, and black metal circles.

Naam used blasts successfully om their neo-psychedelic romp of a debut album. It reflects a growing trend to experiment with the drum techniques and textures, that may have started with Mastodon, but bands like Rosetta, and now Thou, have picked up the torch and decisively proved that a drummer can be a creative driving force within a band.

The blasts aren’t really what sets this album apart, but they’re a mere foreshadowing of what’s to come, as the band lurch and plow their way through the listeners eardrums with 52 minutes of their patented post-rock meets sludge / doom sound. It’s hardly single mindedly heavy by any means, Thou mix things up well with melodic flourishes and flowing instrumental passages, but when they do drop the doom riffs, they make sure their 5150 amps aren’t set to merely stun.

Continue reading: StonerRock.com – Thou – Summit.

Long seen as mostly barren wastes in the overall map of extreme music, both Portugal and Spain have been throwing up a hell of a scene in the past few years, especially when it comes to the whole doom, sludge or stoner stuff. Spain alone has given us Adrift, Moho, Orthodox, Viaje A 800, Monkeypriest or Aathma, to name but a few of the uglier ones, strictly musically speaking of course. Pick of the bunch so far, however, and ugliest by far too, are these strange named fellows.

Continue reading: JOSÉ’S BAND OF THE WEEK: LORDS OF BUKKAKE.

Founding member Kirk Fisher — long the sole driving force behind Buzzov*en — has reassembled the band’s classic …At A Loss –era lineup with bassist “Dixie” Dave Collins (also of Weedeater) and drummer Ramzi for these special fall shows.

Buzzov*en U.S. tour dates:

Sep. 25 – Charlotte, NC – Tremont Music Hall
Sep. 29 – Chicago, IL – Reggie’s Rock Club
Sep. 30 – New York, NY – Rocks Off Concert Cruise Aboard the Temptress
Oct. 01 – Baltimore, MD – Ottobar
Oct. 02 – Austin, TX – Emo’s

In the time since the band’s initial hiatus, Kirk Fisher put together the “acoustic southern blues” band K.LLoyd & The Disciples  (also featuring Down drummer / Eyehategod guitarist Jimmy Bower and Eyehategod/Soilent Green guitarist Brian Patton) and has battled against formidable personal demons. His return to the stage after working to get his life back together after years of addiction and other problems is viewed as a red-letter victory by his peers and longtime fans.

Now, Buzzov*en officially announces its return and will kick off its new life with a string of East Coast live performances set to launch on September 25 in Charlotte, North Carolina. These fall tour dates are but a precursor to band’s upcoming plans as a new studio album will be recorded and released in 2011, followed by larger-scale tour plans.

Continue reading: BLABBERMOUTH.NET – Reunited BUZZOV*EN Announces U.S. Tour Dates.

Kirk Windstein formed Crowbar in 1991. Since that time, the band’s sound has profoundly influenced a new generation of metal acts the world over. Weinstein is also a key member of Kingdom of Sorrow (with Hatebreed front man Jamey Jasta) and Down.

Secondly, this is the biggest and warmest guitar sound and heaviest production I have heard since  Dopesmoker by Sleep. No shit. You may disagree. Order a copy and find out. We are talking drop F tuned guitars that hang heavy in the air like huge damp octopi and thud into the floorboards in a sickening wave of oscillating brutality. Thank Foel Studios in Wales for this cyclopean wallop in the head, and particularly to the spot-on engineering suss of Chris Fielding (ex-Agents Of Morai). What a star this guy is.

First track ‘Krull’ opens up like a bloody huge blanket of noise that floods your house with sheer oppressive bottom-end malevolence. Very very fucking thick, like deathly treacle, but also extremely graceful and grand. This is sloth-slow post-sludge that rotates on an axis of almost minimalist dynamics. As the echo soaked and distant sounding vocals kick in you pick up a strong comparison with the haunting sound of the Slomatics; obviously an influence, but not to the point of hollow plagiarism. A minute from the end of the track the tempo picks up and John McNulty bellows like a frosted Viking in the mist over a maelstrom of twisting raging metal.

Continue reading: The Sleeping Shaman – Conan ‘Horseback Battle Hammer’ CD/LP 2010.
(Special thanks to Lee/The Sleeping Shaman for the very kind permission)

Weedeater have been pushed to their limits over the past twelve months. While it’s been a year of heavy and successful touring for the band, it was also a year of catastrophic physical injury to this seemingly invincible trio. Leading off with Dixie Dave Collins’ shotgun accident which spawned the brutal “Nine Toe Tour” earlier this year, and continuing shortly after that with drummer Keko tearing his meniscus after returning from said tour and requiring surgery. Both of those accidents prevented the group’s two previously scheduled meetings with Albini. The group’s latest installment of injury includes guitarist Shep breaking his pinkie finger while on tour in Europe this July alongside Black Cobra and Saviours. Luckily, Shep can still riff with his cast so the European tour and the recording session were spared.

These accidents have forced the band to push the recording for their now hard-earned upcoming full-length back several times now. Initially scheduled to take place in January of this year, then again in April, the trio will now step into Albini’s Electrical Audio Studio this September 15-19 to hammer out their mammoth 4th full-length Jason… The Dragon, their 2nd release for Southern Lord Recordings.

If you had to situate Howl sonically, they would probably fall somewhere between Baroness, High On Fire, Soilent Green, and Sleep, you get the drift. A sort of stonery Sabbathy sludge, that doesn’t wallow in tarpit tempos, but instead bulldozes through dense clouds of grinding buzz, slipping from midtempo crush to woozy metallic swing, to blasting thrashing pummel. The drums like battering rams, the guitars murky and muddy, with occasional bursts of psychedelic leads, that help balance the band’s predominant low low low end. The vocals a monstrous bellow,  and all that wound into churning, almost proggy arrangements, some of the moments recall the heaving might of Neurosis, while others, channel classic metal into something way more dark and dirgey.

The whole record is a headspinning, neck snapping riff fest, but the final track, “The Day Of Rest” might be our favorite, the slowest and most sprawling of the bunch, slipping from serpentine Sabbathy slither to cool start stop ultra dynamic lurch and lumber, to almost Maideny melodicism, churning chug underpinned by pounding double kick drumming, while guitars harmonize over the top, before getting almost shoegazey near the end, finally winding down with some droned out layered guitar feedback. Fuck Yeah.

At 40 years old, Aquarius is the oldest independent record store in San Francisco. We try to only carry music we love, and we’re always searching for more new, cool, weird and wonderful music. All of which we then share with you, our loyal customers.

Matador is scheduled for a July 13 North American release via E1 Music.

Continue reading: BLABBERMOUTH.NET – EYEHATEGOD: Entire Providence Concert Posted Online.