Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Arc

(Words by Gumpy, Doomfinder General)

Agoraphobic Nosebleed return faster than ever, this time managing to squeeze 27 songs into only 3 minutes.... Wait a second, there's only 3 songs and one of them is 12 minutes long? It's a sludge album? What the hell is going on?

Shit talking aside there is a very good reason for this drastic change in direction; instead of just making another album, Agoraphobic Nosebleed decided to make 4 because... why not? Each one is being written by a different member of the band, and the first of these - Arc - is Katherine Katz's one. However how does it hold up? Agoraphobic Nosebleed may have dabbled with slow in the past but they are predominantly a fast-as-absolute-fuck band.

It's amazing, of course it's amazing. Agoraphobic Nosebleed could make a power metal album and it would still kick the shit out of every other power metal album (that's not a challenge by the way).  Kat's vocals, which if I'm being honest I thought were a bit off on Agorapocalypse, are perfect here. The slower pace gives them a bit more room to breathe and they sound better for it. There are massive riffs flying about everywhere, and the programmed drums sound meaty and must have some sludge drummers worried about their jobs. It might not be Agoraphobic Nosebleed as we know it, but when the music is this good who cares? (I still want more weird ultra fast grind, though.)

Gnaw Their Tongues - Abyss Of Longing Throats

(Words by Doomfinder General)

I'd never heard of Gnaw Their Tongues until I saw them live at Roadburn and I was almost instantly blown away by them (I say them - it's just one guy making so much horrible music from his basement). A mix of black metal and noise would probably be the best way to describe this but then again so would two people screaming at you when the sound of the world ending at million miles per hour plays in the background. so when i got home pretty much the first thing I had to do was find the newest album by them.

Abyss Of Longing Throats is a more darker and restrained beast than I was expecting, with opener "Lick The Poison From The Cave Walls" going at not much more than a crawl. The music is mostly various horrible noises in the background with intermittent black metal style vocals. You have to wait until track 3 to get any blast beats, giving the music almost an illusion of being straight black metal but with an industrial hint.

The rest of the album doesn't really deviate from that formula as such, going from slow horrible noise to, well, faster horrible noise, all the while having vocals screamed at you. But it's amazing nothing else in the world really sounds like it so go give it a listen.

Cult of Occult - Five Degrees Of Insanity

(Words by Doomfinder General)

It's a word that gets thrown around a lot these days but fuck, Cult Of Occult are heavy. From the crushing guitar to the viscous vocals and the pounding drums it's almost too much at times but it never stops being amazing albeit in a thoroughly unpleasant way.

Five Degrees Of Insanity (as can you see from the album cover) is about a man slowly losing his mind - which is a pretty good description of the music. The album starts off with a slow feedback build up for about a minute - lulling you into a false sense of security - then kicks in and you are almost instantly drowning in a river of pain, anguish and misery that pretty music doesn't let up for 70 minutes. "Misanthropic" offers a brief respite from the constant misery with an almost black metal-like intro and a slow, psych-outro, but still has a solid 10 minutes of good old horrible sludgy misery.

If you are in any into sludge or generally unpleasant music this is well worth a listen.

Windhand - Soma

(Words by Richard Lewis, Doomfinder General)

Windhand are a doom band from the USA that play the kind of heavy fuzzy as fuck doom with washed out vocals that everyone loves. Whilst some people will read that as Windhand being some sort of second rate Electric Wizard, the reality couldn't be further from the truth.

Opener "Orchard" sums up the overall feel of the album with massive fuzzy riff following massive fuzzy riff while vocalist Dorthia Cottrell's haunting voice helps lull you into an almost trance-like state (which also makes the album being named after the perfect drug from Brave New World far more apt). There is a nice acoustic break about halfway through (which you would think is jarring but  it actually fits really well and I'd like to hear more of it in the future) before it's back to the fuzz which ends with my personal favourite song, "Cassock".

The massive (in both sound and length) "Boleskine" follows, and even at 30 minutes it seems to end too soon. Sometimes you really do just want to listen to the same riff over and over again for about 10 minutes because it's so good. Eventually, it fades and all that is left is the sound of wind and you're left wondering where the last 75 minutes went.