Unpredictability in general is something that people would prefer to do without in almost all aspects of life. The exception to this is art, where in unpredictability serves to exhilarate and shock the audience for purposes of entertainment. This extends to heavy music as well and these days avant-garde bands are not too rare to stumble upon. Heavy Baby Sea Slugs, from Texas, USA is a band whose experimental take on sludge / punk ensures that the music is rife with the above mentioned unpredictability. Recently, this band released a short four track EP titled ‘Teenage Graveyard Party’ on the occasion of their tour in Asia. The band’s fascination with drone, doom, sludge, noise and punk comes together to create 4 tracks that are diverse, eclectic and weirdly ominous sounding.
Sludge Metal
All posts tagged Sludge Metal
Following a 5 year break after their debut release, Slabdragger have concocted a follow up that is worth the long wait. For the uninitiated, the band name gives away the style pursued by this UK based power trio; slow, heavy music that trudges at a measured pace. ‘Rise of the Dawncrusher’ comes off as a well rounded affair that makes use of the best elements of bluesy stoner metal, doom metal and sludge. The lines differentiating these styles are blurred on this record and the result is giant monolithic album that spans over an hour long, which manages to keep the listener tuned in without imparting a sense of fatigue.
The loss of a fellow human being is one of the hardest things to deal with in life and when a band loses one of its members, it can take a toll on the very existence of the band. Georgia based sludge band Black Tusk recently endured such a tragedy when founding member Jonathan Athon passed away back in 2014. The band however, has soldiered on to release their fourth full length titled ‘Pillars of Ash’, a high energy sludge, hardcore crossover record that contains some of the last recorded work of their fallen comrade. Black Tusk tread a path that blurs the lines between hardcore punk and sludge, producing music that has equal parts punk attitude and equal parts groovy sludge.
Despite the obvious handicap of having no vocals, there has been an uptick in the number of instrumental bands in recent times and more often than not, they play a ‘post’ variation of metal. In case of the Belgian four-piece Hemelbestormer, the choice of style lies close to the grimy underbelly of sludge metal. ‘Aether’ is the band’s debut full length and with four long tracks, the record comes off more of an experience, than a traditional record. The music has a strong melodic flavor with a lot of ambient and heavy sludge passages thrown in and at the time of listening to the record, the riffs manage to do a decent job of entertaining the listener. Then again, the problem with not just Hemelbestormer, but most instrumental post metal bands is regarding the memorability, which ‘Aether’ is not exempt from.
First off, no numbering. I don’t feel any of these albums are comparable, they each stand out on their own merits at what they do. And also, I don’t want to start this by saying what a great year this has been for music.
2015 was in my opinion just as good as the year before that and the year before that and so on…
There´s never been a golden age of music, the majority of music put out every year is mostly shit, but if you look hard enough you can find some gold here and there. And indeed I found some really good stuff this last year as well.