SLOTH - VOICE OF GOD

SLOTH formed toward the end of the 90's and put out one full release and a demo. It's kind of sad to even think about that since this is such an exciting album in general. VOICE OF GOD is an hour long twisted journey of paranoid mixed vocals, guttural droning instruments that can just as easily creep as sprint. Flourishing and fluid drums parts that sound like they have hyper obesity. But everything in this album is down tuned in fathoms, they are that fucking low, but being able to change tempo just as easily as they can start wailing out sonic grooves of delicious metal is a delight.

The opening track WISHMAN is just a taste of things to come, trench digging riffs welcome you as you start to see why the band is named SLOTH. A sweetly played grooving solo pushes the song further, farther and faster as the band starts to unleash pounding drums that are so heavy you think a giant army of Elephants is about to stampede out of them.

LORD OF THE GALLOWS is next up on the chopping block as you get sucked into the fucking sick riffs these guys keep doling out, this song definitely has a spacey feel to you. Its at a nice cruising speed song with a very catchy chorus part both vocally and guitar work wise.

GEMINIAN launches you out into the stillness of black space, floating weightless and tumbling gently through its folds. This song builds out the space vibe thicker and blacker, as flangers and reverb are rolled gently over the band. The composition starts to builder further pressing you on your journey as you fly past gas giant, further out as you pass the level of galaxies, overseeing all of the universe.

The track beautifully rolls into nice down tempo piece of straining guitars with a bluesy vibe. INTO THE SUN brings you back to the neighborhood but just far enough to see the members of the galaxy. They keep showing off, I swear it. The chorus is just as infectious as in LORD OF THE GALLOWS.

GREEN MAGICK puts us past the halfway mark of this album as it starts out with some drone worship and building drums. The entire band erupts into almost a volcanic like explosion of riff and drum playing. Pounding off gigantic throbbing chords  as the drums start to move into the next section with surgical precision the band working right around. The piece starts to dwarf all the other tracks previous as it continue riding this clodding beast of spacey riffs further and further, vocals mixing and playing around perfectly.  This is a fucking neck breaker of a track.

Now we come to the title track VOICE OF GOD, meet VOICE OF GOD. Mammoth BLACK SABBATH-Esq riffs vaporize all inhabitants who would hear this blared out of a pillar of amps and speakers. The vocals are something I really enjoy out of this album, they are dirty and funky while sounding like they are being sung by a drunk madman. This song is just another example of why its really unfortunate this is all they put out album wise. The second to last album finishes off with droning as it pushes right into the next song, never skipping a beat.

CASTING THE CIRCLE is the last track, and has you about a million miles from where you started back down on a planet looking back up at longing to take flight again. The imagery that this song evokes goes from demonic and hellish, to ethereal and divine. The chorus hints at that spacey journey you took as the remainder of the song always keeps you firmly grounded. It starts to strip down as the vocals become spoken, the accent breaks out and fits in so easily with everything. Musically this is strolling, observing, just wandering and thinking until the drone worship begins. This really gives you a good idea of how incredibly tuned down everything is. Massive knifes of stone stab up around you transforming you from a simple man to a conqueror of heights. The guitar works along blazing a purple hue of space as all your fears drift away, the snare slicing through a web of steel work as the bass grinds away with a lumbering gate. The whole massive tightly tuned train of cosmic decent ceases slowly hissing and eroding.

So we reached the conclusion of this album. It's just a very impressive effort it sounds so well thought out and smooth. None of the tracks sound out of place, this could be one entire song its just that fluid. The band is well recorded and mixed, the drums are always something I naturally gravitate to and enjoy, but this album has more then that. This has talented guitar and bass work, they sound schizophrenic, like the guitars hidden bass personality sprung out. This band really knows how to move from one part to the next, they really put together an album that is never boring or a part never too long. I've listened to this album numerous times and it still continues to sound fresh despite it closing in on ten years old, I just wish they would have put out more.

Track Listing:

1.) Wishman
2.) Lord Of The Gallows
3.) Germinian
4.) Into The Sun
5.) Green Magick
6.) The Voice Of God
7.) Casting The Circle

REVEREND BIZARRE - III: SO LONG SUCKERS

A finely melded three piece started in 1995 from frosty Finland, REVEREND BIZARRE, have been sweetly pouring the thickest and tastiest doom licks this side of the Milky Way.  Twelve years later their last album is brought forth to the masses, clocking in at over 2 hours long this is a journey of a doom odyssey that would put Homer's  to shame. This is a truly unique slice even for doom metal, the compositions change from upbeat tones, to sexually tense groans in the midst of tumbling drum fills. When they touch on the traditional aspects prepare for the long haul across a darkly lit landscape of ghostly guitar work. 

The opening track, THEY USED DARK FORCES/TEUTONIC WITCH, is the longest cut just fifty five seconds shy of thirty minutes, but is the most diverse composition consisting of two different themes and a long bridge of the most beautiful melodic drone portions I've ever imagined. 

The second longest track, SORROW, is a dirge that clocks in at over fifteen minutes long before slamming into overdrive and then comes tearing back home into a beautiful drum and bass jam outro occupying the last few minutes until the guitar roars back in for the finale. This is a track that grew on me and the drum's sound so beautiful, warm and fat with crisp cymbals playfully dancing nothing sounding out of place.


FUNERAL SUMMER is another traditional doom track that yet again screeches in destroying the sound barrier with some double bass work and sonic guitar works reverberates at the final few minutes before slamming to a halt. The final part is truly a highlight of the album.

The band changes tone with the track ONE LAST TIME, a playful opening portion calls to the listener "Won't you warm my lonely night?" while the lyrics continue on painting  a picture of a warrior seeking comfort before marching off to die.  This is a lackluster opening for the second portion of the album as the song never really changes pace.


KUNDALINI ARISEN is the only full instrumental track and the second shortest of all the offerings on the album. It is a nice funky rock out piece with some interesting guitar work that sounds like screeching sirens of an alien emergency vehicle. The bass riffs are far more interesting then the guitar work and the drum's are mostly their to keep time but do add somewhat of an element of a band jamming fully out.

CAESAR IS FOREVER illuminates the last of the album, pounding away brutally like a massive army traveling a beautifully suffering land of washed out color. The guitar sounds sharp as a razor with orange hues vibrating gracefully consuming long strikes before pulling out some of the sickest riffs since the beginning of the album. The bass gladly steps up to the plate and growls back but never outshines it. To me REVEREND BIZARRE has always had some of the most fucking epic drum parts, and they deliver more then you could ever hope for. They take on almost a army marching sound as the lyrics round out this entire mammoth track with a tale of the brutality. The song slowly ends out with the instruments melting into what sounds like a synthesized organ, but it sounds completely fitting.

The second to last track and the third longest at over twenty five minutes long is titled ANYWHERE OUT OF THIS WORLD, and the melancholy feel of the intro  is beautifully orchestrated from a slow moving noodling that abruptly finds the band in very classic REVEREND BIZARRE territory. As they gallop through this portion just as quick as it started it ends and changes pace to a slow pounding march of drums with droning bass and guitar. They play between these two portions for a few minutes more before kicking the faster of them up another notch with double bass work really letting it develop over the course of couple of minutes before coming back around. The song then fades out into a new passage, this probably being the most unique part of the entire album. The vocals tell the story of a love found in a fantasy alone as the entire band dances softly around for a few minutes before the guitar and bass quickly build back into a powerful passage to finish out the final track. The bass work is intricate and interesting, while the guitar is powerfully blaring out epic chords, the drums just strike solidly and never sound overpowering like in the other tracks. This is a beautiful finale of the album as the last track UNTITLED (or under its nickname MALLORCA) is an sound scape of vibrating destruction that finishes off with a very other wordily portion of drum playing and vocals.


This is a band at its peak concocting hugely immense and deep sounding instruments to do their every bidding. Their sound is almost biblical the drums sound like brimstone pelting the most barren apocalyptic soil while the guitar and bass buzz beautifully evaporating every soul in judgement. Albert Witchfinders vocals are in top form and his range has always been very impressive. From howling cries, to despairingly low haunts, they are sung strongly and confidently and leave you wanting more to sing along too.

I enjoyed every track on this album to some extent but REVEREND BIZARRE is not for everyone, and this is a hard album to digest all at once. The length itself will be hard for some people to just comprehend let alone physically listen to all ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY MINUTES! But if you are a fan of REVEREND BIZARRE their earlier works would occasionally jump in the double digits but this being their swan song just seems like a massive gift to the listener itself in both quantity and quality. 


Track Listing:

Side One
1.) They Used Dark Forces/Teutonic Witch
2.) Sorrow
3.) Funeral Summer

Side Two
1.) One Last Time
2.) Kundalini Arisen
3.) Caesar Forever
4.) Anywhere Out Of This World
5.) Untitled (Mallorca)