Ephemeros - All Hail Corrosion

Review by Justin C.


My first classical guitar teacher had a quirk that I only came to appreciate later on, long after we'd parted ways. Whenever he played something during a lesson, even if it was a snippet of a song or part of a technical exercise, he performed it. Anyone who's taken (or given) a musical lesson knows that it's pretty common for a teacher to quickly demonstrate something, whether it's a bit of technique a tricky rhythm the student's not getting, and it's often done in a fairly offhand manner. Not for this fellow, though. He would sit up, arrange himself into the perfect playing position, and make music. Even if he was just playing two notes from a scale, he approached them with the utmost musicality.

I share this anecdote not because you're particularly fascinated with my own musical history, but because it helps explain why I think Ephemeros's album All Hail Corrosion is so compelling. This is epic funeral doom, slow-moving and full of menace. The album only has three tracks, with the shortest one clocking in at nearly 11 minutes. The vocals are roared, and the instrumentals are simple and restrained. If you listen to just an excerpt or two, you might be forgiven for thinking that any power the music has is through drone and repetition, but that's far from the case. The riffs might come in the form of slow, single-note lines, but the musicians ring every bit of musicality they can out of every note. The melodies may evolve slowly, but it's not a matter of waiting through 20 repetitions to see what changes. They play every phrase like it's the first one on the record, and every one of them sounds fresh. You don't wait around for a blast of noodling or a killer riff that disappears as quickly as it arrives--you take in every long, low, buzzing note.

There are plenty of great moments that could be singled out--the creepy, alternating-note guitar figure that opens the first track, or the first vocal howls and thundering bass and drums that erupt after the guitar line has had plenty of time to set the stage. There's a haunting outro in the second track, and there are some fantastic, sludgy guitar harmonies in the final track, a track that builds into a restrained fury before coming to what, for this band, is almost an "abrupt" ending. But picking out the little interesting bits almost does the album a disservice. I think to really appreciate this, you need to let the whole album sink in on one setting, carrying you along on its crushing, hypnotic journey.

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Batillus - Concrete Sustain

Written by Justin C.


We've all had the experience: A band you've been following puts out a new album. You get it, press play, and think, "Wait, this isn't the [insert band name here] I remember! Why did they change their [sludge/doom/black/death/etc.]?" I had that experience with the new Batillus album, Conrete Sustain, but I'll tell you why it will all be O.K.

Photo by Carmelo Española.

If the band's last album, Furnace, was a sludgy/doomy affair, then Conrete Sustain shows them giving more space to their industrial influence. The opening track, "Concrete," features a lock-step marching tempo under fuzzed out guitars and bass with singer Fade Kainer barking, "Sustain and dominate!" like a brutal commander. Straightaway, you hear how well suited Kainer's voice is for this style of industrial metal. His voice is focused and raw, and it makes me want to run around my office shrieking orders at my coworkers. More than I usually do, anyway.

To be fair, this change isn't as huge of a shift as I thought on first listen. After all, the second track on Furnace, "Deadweight," churned along like the soundtrack from one of the Terminator movies, with Kainer screaming, "Fall on your knees!" What we get with Conrete Sustain is really an extension of that sound. The songs are spare and tight. There are no walls of sound here--these tracks are pared down to their simplest elements with plenty of space for the individual instruments to breathe.

Photo by Carmelo Española.

And if you're worried that the band has completed abandoned their doomier sound, don't be. The nearly 9-minute-long closer, "Thorns," rumbles along at an appropriately slow pace, with deep, rumbling vocals only punctuated by Kainer's harsher screams. It's a beautiful, melancholy epic with poetic lyrics about releasing pain.

If you're at all put off by the early songs on this album or the "industrial" label, don't be. It may take a while for this record to sink in for fans of the band's earlier work, but it's well worth the time.

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Stoneburner - Sickness Will Pass

Stoneburner's debut full-length Sickness Will Pass is available on the Seventh Rule Recordings Bandcamp. This is blackened and doomy sludge. Downtuned, moody, and heavy as hell. But also with intricate songwriting, clean breaks, and progressive parts that wouldn't have been out of place on early Mastodon albums. Stoneburner will be judged because bassist/vocalist Damon Kelly is son of Scott Kelly from Neurosis, but are clearly a band capable of standing on their own. Check out the reviews from The Sleeping Shaman and The Sludgelord.

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Harpoon - Deception Among Birds

By Natalie Zina Walschots. Chicago, IL-based Harpoon combine the speed of grind with the sonic effects of drone. Deception Among Birds is marked by layered, obscured vocals, big, booming drums and highly distorted guitars. This album is composed

By Natalie Zina Walschots. Originally published by Exclaim.


Chicago, IL-based Harpoon combine the speed of grind with the sonic effects of drone. Deception Among Birds is marked by layered, obscured vocals, big, booming drums and highly distorted guitars. This album is composed entirely of frayed edges – the songs evolve, morphing as they progress. "Trogodyte's Delight" begins at a sludgy, oozing pace then gradually thins out and speeds up. As the song flows more rapidly, it runs cleaner. At times, like in "the Cut of His Jib," the cacophony and layering can get a bit out of control, the waters too muddied to drink. The complexity can get the better of this album here and there, but the moments of clarity are extremely well executed.

Atriarch - Forever the End

By Natalie Zina Walschots. Portland, OR-based Atriarch have produced something extraordinary with their debut. There is a profound difference between music that merely pouts and music that strives for the ambience of truly dark, depressive doom.

By Natalie Zina Walschots. Originally published by Exclaim.

Portland, OR-based Atriarch have produced something extraordinary with their debut. There is a profound difference between music that merely pouts and music that strives for the ambience of truly dark, depressive doom. Atriarch have produced a brilliantly crafted example of genuine melancholy, intelligent, gothic doom combined with the smoky, mystical atmosphere of some of the best black metal. The album's thrumming bass tones are deep and somehow tremulous, possessing a crushing weight that's also profoundly vulnerable.

Atriarch have captured the sound of grieving on an album that drags itself along and tears itself open. Yet Forever the End is also reflective and critical, vacillating between the pure, towering experience of that grief and the careful dissection of it. In this, the album manages to be both overwhelming and precise. The songs are structured like chants and invocations, and the ambience Atriarch create is very much a ritual, especially the beginning of "Plague" and the end of "Downfall." This is a rite that comes, wails and rages, fills the listener completely with a seething ocean of emotion, then leaves the world a bit bleaker in its wake.

Sweet Cobra - Praise

Sweet Cobra's Praise from 2003 was added to the Seventh Rule Recordings Bandcamp. This is sludgy hardcore - raw, energetic and with an indie quality. Here's a review from A Handful of Dust

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