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)

ELECTRIC WIZARD - COME MY FANATICS

ELECTRIC WIZARD. To Doom and Stoner metal fans these two words invoke images of the deepest sludge, the darkest hues, the thickest smoke of all thoughts imaginable. COME MY FANATICS is considered their first masterpiece, and a landmark for the genre. The sound is something few bands can replicate, an almost lo-fi mist covers every album track with a thick fuzz swirling every chord. This album is amazing, the lyrics are grotesquely nihilistic with lines like " I am a god, I am the one" howled in such a truthful tone its impossible to deny it. The album cover is another piece of a perfect album (done by Hugh Gilmour who also did the cover of their 2000 album DOPETHRONE). Before you even listen to a single track the mood has been set. Music like this is worth living for.

Track Listing:

1.) Return Trip
2.) Wizard In Black
3.) Doom-Mantia
4.) Ivixor B / Phase Inducer
5.) Son Of Nothing
6.) Solarian 13

TONER LOW - INTERVIEW

TONER LOW are a trifecta of epic drone proportions from the Netherlands. Their first album was a self titled trip that took the listener on a spacey journey through the universe. In the late fall of 2008 TONER LOW released their mammoth album II( Roadkill Rekordz (CD) Freebird Records (Vinyl) ) . A change in sound was evident, with their new grooves being stretched further and darker then their previous work. I was able to ask some questions with Daan, main guitarist and vocals, for TONER LOW.


Doomed Review - Where does your name come from?

Daan (guitar/vocals) - Basically the name comes from the messages that you see on (old) printers, when the toner is low, haha. Our former bassplayer/vocalist Deef, who was one of the founders of Toner Low back in 1998, thought it would be a cool bandname. I came up with The Teenage Lesbians, but nobody seemed to like that, so we became Toner Low. We have always related the name to our low and heavy sound though, and left behind the link with printers a long time ago. To be one step ahead of those who still connect our name with printers, in recent years I have come up with this other explanation, that ‘Toner Low’ also can be seen as a form of badly written Norwegian, meaning something like ‘Law of Tones’. In Norwegian that would be written somewhat like ‘Toners Lov’, and wherever we play live we sort of lay down the law with our loud tones and sound, so how’s that for a bandname explanation haha.


Doomed Review - Alot of your songs have somewhat of a science fiction feel to them. Were you influenced by any specific works of this genre?

Daan (guitar/vocals) - I agree with you on some of the samples from our first cd/lp from 2006, that indeed have a scifi-feel. Those were created by Jack (drums) and Deef. I don’t think they were influenced by any specific movies or books. Instead Deef wrote some lyrics for the first cd/lp that were inspired by technology turning against its master, like in Devilbot (aka Evil Machinery) and to a lesser amount in Murphy (aka Praying For Murphy’s Law). On the second cd/lp from 2008 the samples are somewhat darker. Those were created by Jack, since Deef left the band in 2007. We don’t like scifi by the way, but I think Deef likes it. The lyrics on our new 2008-album are really about nothing. The only one that makes sense is the lyrics to the song Two, which are about living in the slow lane, rejecting the rat-race and becoming a drop-out. The words reflect my persona very much, so I think most of my future lyrics will be variations on this.


Doomed Review - How did you come about playing this style of music?


Daan (guitar/vocals) - We evolved into this psychedelic doom/drone-style over the years. Toner Low started in 1998 using stoner, doom, guitar rock and psychedelic influences in our songs. Until 2001/2002 when we redefined our sound with a more doomy than stoner approach to writing riffs and creating arrangements. We wanted a sound less varied and more of our own, but I must add that in the early years we already wrote 10-minutes songs and used samples, although the music was much more vocal-orientated back then. Devilbot (written in 2001/2002) is the song that marks the shifting to a different sound.


Doomed Review - What is the normal process you guys follow for writing a song i.e. are they cultivated from jam sessions? does someone approach another member with a riff or idea?

Daan (guitar/vocals) - Most of the second cd-songs are for the main part written by Jack, with a few riffs added that I came up with. Some songs started as a jam, but it’s really hard to tell how a particular song came together. Most of the songs from the second cd/lp have had several arrangements before we recorded them, and during this process we’re always open to re-arranging some parts ‘cause in the end the song will sound better and more thought-out. We rehearsed and recorded without samples by the way, those were created and added by Jack in the months after the recordings.


Doomed Review - In a world that seems to be falling apart, what do you hope to bestow upon the listener?

Daan (guitar/vocals) - I think that would be a different answer for each Toner Low-member. My answer is that I would like the listener to have a trip and gets carried away from life and the world, with or without dope, alcohol, headbanging, air guitar-playing, tinnitus and/or rocking-position with horned fist. By the way, I would like to thank all that bought our albums and come to our gigs. Also I would like to announce something I am very proud of, and that is that in Austria there has been founded the Church of Toner Low by Mario the Master From Orion. I hope soon to move to Austria and become a dopesmokercult-leader with some cute girls-following, haha.

Make sure to check out TONER LOW at:
http://www.myspace.com/tonerlowstonerdoom
http://www.roadkillrekordz.nl/tonerlow/

THE DEEP BLUE - INTERVIEW

THE DEEP BLUE are a 3 piece who hail from the United Kingdom. Their first release ANTARTIC ABYSS (Church Within Records) brought them great reviews and took them on the FEAR NO PAIN TOUR in 2008 with LORD VICAR. During this time their second album SUN WORSHIPER (Church Within Records) was released and saw them expanding on their immense spacy sound.

Doomed Review - Hey guys!

Deep Blue -  Hey

Doomed Review -  How was it to tour with LORD VICAR? Any memoriable moments?

Deep Blue - It was  very cool. It was the first tour for both our bands  so everyone was equal. The shows were excellent and the crowd really understood what we were about.

Doomed Review - You guys like to use alot of lights for your shows. What sort of visual imagery do you represent?

Deep Blue -  Well we really only play in small clubs and bars, and you only ever have normal lighting while your playing which is pretty boring. So from the first show we introduced 3 Dull green lights and 2 smoke machines. We have the club lights turned off so its dark as hell,and the smoke starts filling the room. This idea totally changes the atmosphere and vibe of the show, and fits the style of music were playing. 

Doomed Review - Your first album ANTARTIC ABYSS was called an "excellent slab o' hypnotic trance sludge", how would you compare this with your new release SUN WORSHIPER?

Deep Blue - We wrote SUN WORSHIPER as part 2 for the first record. So they tie together really well. Its the same style of riffs but with a heavy space influence so we used some heavy synth to mix it up a bit and give it a cool 70's sci-fi  theme.  We also took influence from BORIS and SUNN O))) for the production of the record. 

Doomed Review - On your SUN WORSHIPER promo video, the first 35 seconds is just a focus on a stack of amps. Was the resemblance to a monolith ala 2001 SPACE ODYSSEY coincidental or intentional?

Deep Blue - Yeah the intro to that movie is a big influence on SUN WORSHIPER, but the video was just a small project to see if we could make something cool to tie in with the release of the record. 

Doomed Review - What brought you guys together to form a band?

Deep Blue - I've been a huge fan of SLEEP and their DOPE SMOKER  Lp for a long time. I listend to that record about 20 times before I thought music needed to be produced at this level again and couldnt understand why any other bands have not been noticably influenced by DOPE SMOKER. So I started writting a few riffs with that in mind and before I knew it we had a band. We were all in fast hardcore bands before this one so it was really exciting to start something totally different and really heavy.

Doomed Review - Thanks guys
Deep Blue -  no problem

Make sure to check out THE DEEP BLUE at:
http://www.myspace.com/thedeepbluewizard
http://www.doom-dealer.de/

TONER LOW - SELF TITLED

"Drone on!" cries this 3 piece from Holland, and drone they do! 2005's Self Titled debut from TONER LOW is a playful mix of heavy progressions and staccato drumming. Songs such as DEVILBOTS DESIGNED TO ASSIMILATE will have you dragging your head as huge vats of fat strings weigh down your eardrums,while PRAYING FOR MURPHYS LAW TO ARISE will break your neck. 


Tracking Listing:

1.) Evil machinery on the rise
2.) Devilbots designed to assimilate
3.) Through endless fields of waving grass we battle
4.) Praying for murphy's law to arise
5.) Into the sunn of nymrod
6.) We will conquer

UFOMAMMUT - LUCIFER SONGS

A brutal power house of undeniable gnashing. 2005's Lucifer Songs from Italian Psychedelic Stoner band UFOMAMMUT is amazingly unique yet completely familiar. The paranoid feeling of black space is thrust upon the listener with intense cave like vocals chasing them through the void. The title track englufs your mind with thoughts of a harsh jagged hellish landscape, grinding away at your skin.





Tracking Listning:

 1.) Blind 
 2.) Hellcore
 3.) Hypnotized
 4.) Astrodronaut
 5.) Lucifer Song