Former Worlds - Iterations of Time

By Justin C. Some metal, especially in the sludgy-doom arena, can be deceptive. An album starts with a furnace blast to your face, filled with SUFFOCATING ANGUISH. You’re immediately sucked in, but then about 35 minutes later--which is only the second song--you sheepishly raise your hand and say, “I’ve anguishly suffocated enough, thank you.”

By Justin C.

Artwork by Erin Severson from Former Worlds.

Some metal, especially in the sludgy-doom arena, can be deceptive. An album starts with a furnace blast to your face, filled with SUFFOCATING ANGUISH. You’re immediately sucked in, but then about 35 minutes later--which is only the second song--you sheepishly raise your hand and say, “I’ve anguishly suffocated enough, thank you.” Everything’s dialed to 11, and there’s little to differentiate one passage from the next.

Enter Former Worlds, who deftly avoid this trap on their first full-length, Iterations of Time. How do they manage it? Sure, the opener, “Spectre,” comes out blasting just as I described above, but listen to that rhythm section. They’ve got a filthy, slow-motion groove going on that carries the song along. Nobody’s going to mistake this for dance music, but might it be the rarely heard sludgy funk? (I hereby dub this microgenre Slunk™) It’s low and slow, but with a contradictory high energy and propulsion.

Add to that the songwriting skill--knowing when to bruise and when to step back to give the listener a little breathing room--and you have a four-song, 41-minute slab of doominess that holds your attention instead of abusing it. See “Variations on a Cave” for some of the band’s slick moves. There’s a higher-pitched line hanging eerily over the chugging, and vocalist Erin Severson mixes some lovely cleans in with her predominantly harsh bellows. I hate ending reviews with a negative, so I’ll say now there’s one point where the band slips, just a little. In the otherwise excellent “Widow Moon,” the closing track and the album’s longest, there’s an extended, quiet interlude in the middle that, although meditative and beautifully done, does have the effect of unmooring the song a bit. But this is a nitpick on an otherwise solid track.

If you’re looking for some genuinely inventive sludgy doom to kick off your year, you’d be hard pressed to do better than Iterations of Time. I knew I was going to write about this album halfway through the first listen, which is a testament to how hard this band can grab you and draw you in.

Dragunov - Arkhipov

By Justin C. Just a little over three years have passed since French post-metal duo Dragunov gave us Korolev, a concept album about the Soviet Union’s space program. They’re back now with another gem, Arkhipov, this time focusing on a specific and frankly terrifying incident that occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

By Justin C.


Just a little over three years have passed since French post-metal duo Dragunov gave us Korolev, a concept album about the Soviet Union’s space program. They’re back now with another gem, Arkhipov, this time focusing on a specific and frankly terrifying incident that occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The album takes its title from Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, a Soviet naval officer. In October of 1962, he was a commodore in command of a flotilla of Russian submarines near Cuba. He was personally on board a sub named B-59. The U.S. Navy located B-59 and began dropping depth charges in an attempt to force the sub to surface. The captain and political officer both agreed to launch a nuclear torpedo. However, Commodore Arkhipov also had to agree to the launch, and he refused. If they had launched, it's entirely possible we wouldn’t be here to discuss metal or much of anything at all, except perhaps how to avoid irradiated super-mutants that would undoubtedly be hunting humanity’s few survivors.

It’s an incredible story that I personally hadn’t heard before, and once again, Dragunov captures the intensity of the situation with just guitars and drums. The band is still instrumental, so except for a few scratchy sound samples, the story is told without a sung, growled, or spoken word. The slow build of “B-59”, featuring a simple, eerie guitar line that eventually builds to heavier riffs with discordant notes punctuating on top, is as good a musical recreation of what that argument aboard the sub must have been like. Similarly, “Keldysh” includes quiet pings that will be familiar to anyone who’s watched a TV show or movie with a submarine using sonar. The sonar is joined by alarms, what sounds like Morse code, and a muscular riff with lockstep percussion.

Even if you don’t care much about Soviet history, Dragunov should appeal to anyone who likes powerful, memorable riffs. They’re not noodly or overly technical, but they’re always head-bangingly good, whether they’re taking a slow Sabbath-esque approach or ripping along like a freight train. I’ve said it in previous reviews, but the fact that just two people are making this incredible noise is beyond impressive. Instrumental metal is often hit-or-miss because we’re so used to having the vocal component. A less competent band would write songs that probably should have vocals but just don’t, but Dragunov is back to show us, once again, that there’s a right way to write compelling, heavy instrumental music. And the right way is their way.

Knelt Rote - Alterity

By Bryan Camphire. The title Alterity refers to the state of being other or different; otherness. It's a fitting and poignant title for this forth record by Knelt Rote, a three-piece American band whose work avoids easy categorization.

By Bryan Camphire.


The title Alterity refers to the state of being other or different; otherness. It's a fitting and poignant title for this forth record by Knelt Rote, a three-piece American band whose work avoids easy categorization. The band's sound has dramatically evolved over the years, and this release feels like a sticky concentrated black resin of their musical ideals. Alterity contains a sound that is potent and dangerous, its lean concoction of harsh textures and precise playing is both uncompromising and eye-opening.

The first track is "Lachesis", the title of which refers to the allotter of human destiny, one of the three Fates of Greek mythology. In under three minutes, Knelt Rote adopt a take no prisoners approach to unspooling their brand of blackened death grind. The tune is chock full of minor key melodies put forth at breakneck tempos over blistering dominant drums. If the record continued on at this pace, it would be great, albeit not altogether dissimilar to music you may have heard before in the realms of high caliber death grind. What makes this release stand out is how the music's rusty screws come lose as performance begins careening off the rails, as though nearly buckling under the force of its own ferocity. By the time we get to the third cut, "Rumination", the guitars have opened up, playing more spaced out rhythms and using the higher registers to cut through the murk.

A succinct set, Alterity tallies up at seven songs, clocking in at twenty-one minutes. Surprises continue through to the end, like the fact that the first guitar solo happens at the beginning of the fifth track, "Othering". The solo is already complete twenty seconds in, no more time was needed for this putrefaction to make its way from the music's yawning maw. The sixth song, "Salience", offers mid-tempo sections that give you just enough time to check yourself for bruises and make sure you haven't lost a tooth before the music sets off at its greased lightning clip once again. "Black Triptych", the record's last offering, presents another twenty second guitar solo about a minute in that pierces through the song like a cigarette burn on a handcuffed arm.

On Alterity, Knelt Rote's creative élan comes from its melding of torturous messy textures and sharp focused execution. Still, it is worth noting that for all the brute heaviness on display, absent from this album is any imagery of brainless skulls or even any overtly direct references to death, as is common in these realms of aural assault. Knelt Rote is an atypical group and they are not going to hit you over the head with this. They have other methods to bring forth their hostile onslaught.