Inter Arma - Paradise Gallows

By Karen A. Mann. One Thanksgiving years ago, a friend of mine and I decided to get out of the house and go see the Russell Crowe Napoleonic naval epic Master and Commander.

By Karen A. Mann

Artwork by Orion Landau

One Thanksgiving years ago, a friend of mine and I decided to get out of the house and go see the Russell Crowe Napoleonic naval epic Master and Commander. Unfortunately, everyone else in town had the same idea, and the only two seats available in the theatre were at the very front and off to the side. We spent the next two hours feeling like we were strapped to the bow of that ship as it heaved through a stormy sea at the bottom of the world. Crew members lost their minds and were cast overboard as the captain desperately chased a bigger and faster enemy. We left the theater feeling overwhelmed and slightly seasick, but ended up talking about that movie all weekend.

That’s the same feeling I got from Inter Arma’s astounding new album, Paradise Gallows, their first full-length since their groundbreaking 2013 release Sky Burial. Lurching through nine songs, Paradise Gallows is a harrowing epic with lyrical peaks and valleys that tosses in everything from blackened discordant guitars to elegiac piano melodies. The cover artwork even includes a sinking ship -- complete with a corpse dangling from the mast -- crashing against a garishly colored sky.

Trey Dalton. Photo © John Mourlas. All rights reserved.

The album’s opener, "Nomini," is a fairly short instrumental number that begins with a somber and lulling acoustic guitar, then segues into a melody that recalls Sky Burial’s Pink Floydian "The Long Road Home." But lest you get too comfortable, the next song, "An Archer in the Emptiness," stomps in like a giant, propelled by T.J. Childers’ frenetic drumming, and Joe Kerkes’ steady low end. The song crashes and soars, buoyed by Mike Paparo’s trademark angry bellow.

One of the album’s finest moments happens on “Transfiguration,” the album’s frenetic third song, which begins with another discordant crash, with Childers and Kerkes propelling the song as guitarists Steven Russell and Trey Dalton play a repetitive, hypnotic riff, and Paparo shrieks through the chaos.

Mike Paparo, T.J. Childers, Steven Russell. Photos © John Mourlas. All rights reserved.

Lyrically, Paradise Gallows is equally intense and unexpected, channeling Existential and Romantic themes of despair, spiritual upheaval, and the relentlessness of nature. On the title song, Paparo sounds like a ghost mournfully echoing from a watery grave:

When I was young, I inflicted a heartless sin. I mocked my fate and ran wild until chance led me here, Where I grew drunk on the trace of a fermenting sun, And buried my failures beneath the ebb and flow of the tides.

Time, have you forgotten my sullied name? Time, have you forgotten the shameful wounds? Time, have you forgotten the boundless grief, I so callously wrought?

Joe Kerkes. Photo © John Mourlas. All rights reserved.

Much has been made -- with good reason -- of the fact that Paparo branches out into clean vocals on this album. Comparisons to Nick Cave are pretty spot-on, particularly on "The Summer Drones," a languid, shimmering song in which the singer alternately intones and bellows the lyrics to masterful effect. Paparo also shines on the final song, "Where the Earth Meets the Sky," where he’s accompanied by haunting backing vocals and a gentle, regretful melody.

With each successive album, Inter Arma has defied genres and gotten away with boundary acrobatics that other bands couldn’t, simply because their ideas are so fearlessly radical and confidently executed. They’ve set a new standard with Paradise Gallows, leaving the listener feeling ravaged, doomed and strangely hopeful.

Desert Storm - Omniscient

By Ulla Roschat. Omniscient is about 50 minutes and ten songs of a blues infused southern stoner rock with a definite psychedelic vibe, touching metal territory, especially with the vocals, and spiced with funky jazzy elements as well as with calm acoustic parts. It’s also the 3rd full length album of NOLA based … wait, no … Oxford, it’s Oxford UK they come from… all right

By Ulla Roschat.


Omniscient is about 50 minutes and ten songs of a blues infused southern stoner rock with a definite psychedelic vibe, touching metal territory, especially with the vocals, and spiced with funky jazzy elements as well as with calm acoustic parts. It’s also the 3rd full length album of NOLA based … wait, no … Oxford, it’s Oxford UK they come from… all right, Oxford based five piece rock/metal band Desert Storm.

The opening song "Outlander" is a fast paced blues laden groovy stoner track. With this track the band comes strutting into a dark dive bar, like a genie released from the bottle, blaring boldly: "We are Desert Storm and we are going to set this place ablaze!". With this magic spell the bar comes to life…. there’s drinking, joking and shouting, stories are being told, with passion and emotion.

Each of the following songs is like a different aspect of what is going on in the bar, each of a distinct character with a measured intricacy, surprising moments and twists, but they are complected, with intertwining textures, magically bound together by a secret formula that is only effective within the walls of this bar.

While the first songs are all dominated by a groovy stoner vibe that is slowly sliding into a dark heavy swamp atmosphere, the 5th song "Home" is a kind of break, a hauntingly beautiful, dark, bluesy folk tune with clean vocals. From here the songs take on more of the jazzy, funky, boogie attitude, without ever letting go of the southern boozy swamp feel.

With the last song "Collapse of the Bison Lung" the genie struts out of the bar as bold as he came in, stomping and raging with one last crushing blast to make sure the destruction is complete and the magic goes up in smoke.

Open the genie’s bottle, or simply push the play button for Omniscient and Desert Storm will take you to the magic bar with their intoxicating homemade spice blend of bluesy, funky, psychedelic and dark folky tunes they use to create their unique style of southern downtuned heaviness.

The song "Home" is featured on The Wicked Lady Show 83

Crawl - Old Wood & Broken Dreams

By Ulla Roschat. With their first full length album Old Wood & Broken Dreams (2014) Atlanta based sludge trio Crawl delivers a chunk of sludge metal that is deeply rooted in southern tradition. It’s bluesy, swampy, heavy, with a thick and sticky atmosphere infused with the smell of whiskey and weed

By Ulla Roschat.



With their first full length album Old Wood & Broken Dreams (2014) Atlanta based sludge trio Crawl delivers a chunk of sludge metal that is deeply rooted in southern tradition. It’s bluesy, swampy, heavy, with a thick and sticky atmosphere infused with the smell of whiskey and weed, executed with a laid back attitude, still destructive as hell.

The album starts with a short instrumental intro track "Crack Tea" and sets the mood with fuzzy blues ridden stoner riffs that hint at the heaviness yet to come. And with each following song, the album gathers intensity and heaviness. The second song “Don’t Kid Me” begins with warm acoustic sounds that soon get wrapped in droney distortion, the next one "Pilldust", again an instrumental track and one of the two longer songs (11:33) on the album, adds hypnotic, minimalistic rhythms that build into doom riffs to finally merge into a psyched out stoner jam.

The Buzzov•en cover "Useless" brings yet another quality of intensity to the album. The vocals here are charged with an extra portion of filth and brutality - a well made new dress for this classic. The longest track “Nigredo” (12:35) uses its time to carefully create massive heavy sludge riffs that evolve from a driving desert-y groove. A quiet ambient "neurosis-like" second part with clean vocals carries the song slowly back to its beginning with a spaced out version of its initial rhythm. A variety of moods and dynamics are in here to enjoy.

And the last track "3 A.M. and a Loaded Gun" is the darkest and most depressive one. The otherwise omnipresent and dominant bluesy, swampy sludge gets twisted here into a cold, bleak kind of sludge, infected with industrial noise, charged with crackling electricity.

Old Wood & Broken Dreams is six songs of traditional southern swamp sludge, soaked in muddy blues and drone sounds, heavy and destructive, but subtly flavoured with stoner grooves, HC beats, psycho rhythms and quiet acoustic parts, blended into the mix in such a skillful way that all comes out pretty organic and contributes to the overall laid back feeling and the high tension dynamics as well… as if this weren’t a contradiction at all.

The song "Useless" is featured on The Wicked Lady Show 85

Inter Arma - The Cavern

By Celtic Frosty. Inter Arma’s The Cavern tells the tale of a lost and dying soul in the desert. Our hero eventually comes upon a cave where he awaits his final fate

By Celtic Frosty.


Inter Arma’s The Cavern tells the tale of a lost and dying soul in the desert. Our hero eventually comes upon a cave where he awaits his final fate, and in the end is consoled by a death-like figure who welcomes him into the black. It seems a fitting and somewhat inevitable tale for the likes of Inter Arma. After all, the band’s last album was called Sky Burial, a reference to a Tibetan tradition of laying the dead to rest on a mountaintop to be eaten by birds of prey.

But it’s not the story that makes The Cavern remarkable. From pounding, doom-laden riffs and throaty screams to proggy instrumental passages to clean vocals and violins, Inter Arma is intent on taking the listener through a musical odyssey that captures the imagination and surprises with its ballsy twists and turns. The degree of difficulty here is immense, and the cohesiveness with which Inter Arma pulls it all off is an impressive feat for even the most seasoned of bands.

Photos by Carmelo Española

On a granular level, the musicianship on The Cavern is sublime. The drumming throughout the song’s 45 minutes is expressive on an almost primal level, pounding out the long arc of a solid and massive backbone. The clean instrumental passages that roam the mid-section of the track build patiently toward those exhilarating peaks of masterful, extended guitar solos. Chunky, slow-burning riffs round out the composition, digging the deepest valleys and delivering hooks all the way down that claw their way in and settle for days.

In a way The Cavern seemed inevitable, and it may yet turn out to be Inter Arma’s greatest musical achievement. It’s a statement of refusal to be categorized. The edges of a half dozen genres bleed together in a dark and beautiful tapestry that covers a wide swath of the musical landscape. With this statement, Inter Arma thrust themselves onto metal’s center stage and demand our attention. Nothing left to do except shut up and listen.

Inter Arma - Sky Burial

By Andy Osborn. Fitting a mold somewhere in the vast landscape between Baroness and Ash Borer, Inter Arma exist as a hulking monolith of cross-genre experimentation.

By Andy Osborn.


Fitting a mold somewhere in the vast landscape between Baroness and Ash Borer, Inter Arma exist as a hulking monolith of cross-genre experimentation. Sky Burial is the sophomore full-length and Relapse debut for the Virginians who, like their music, have been slowly but steadily pounding away at the metallic psyche. The press release for the record mentions a full five genres that the band spreads its wings across, daunting and daring to be sure. But unlike so many hybrid acts seeking to carve their own unique niche in the world of heavy music, Inter Arma do so effortlessly without straying too far from their own established identity.

Sky Burial is a risky and monstrous effort, maxing out a CD at 70 minutes and pushing the limits of a single release. The meat of the album is feasted upon in the form of five double-digit tracks that weave their way through doomy sludge but never fully give themselves away. Skip to any given moment and you don’t know if you’re going to be confronted with a blackened barrage, an eerie acoustic diversion or a slow-fuse of Deep South-inspired drudgery. Breathers come in the form of Americana passages that take a break from the doom and gloom and give you a chance to relax in the eye of the storm before the cyclonic winds pick up again.

Photos by Karen A. Mann

Upon my first listen, the diversity and dynamic approach of the tracks left me unsure of what was fully taking place. There’s just so much to digest. The continually rising and falling tension spellbinds you as you wait for the moments when chaos unfolds in a most satisfying manner. It's rare to find slow music that can increase your heart rate and keep you on edge; at times I was left physically nervous. But providing such an emotional and engaging ride is precisely what makes an artist great.

The highlight of the album is the last quarter hour. “Love Absolute” works in partnership with the beginning of the final, titular track to prepare you for the absolute onslaught of the album’s end. Caution is thrown to the wind as Inter Arma end Sky Burial with frenetic, interplaying riffs that build off one another until exploding into a cacophony of never-ending fills and catchy melodic flourishes. You’re left in an eerily calm state, unsure of the madness that was unleashed… and you can’t wait to experience it again.

Death Denied - Appetite For Booze

Death Denied is a southern metal band from Poland and Appetite For Booze is their debut from 2011. This style of music is easy to turn into one big cliché, but Death Denied pretty much nail it. Their take on southern sludge is not original at all, but the riffs are solid, the solos are cool, and there are more vocal hooks than there are stars on the rebel flag as Full Metal Attorney says in his review. Give Appetite For Booze a spin below.

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