SLUMBER ROOM and EARTHLORD cassettes still for sale @ crucialblastshop.net/. These are OUT OF PRINT via NVS. SLUMBER ROOM self-titled CASSETTE (No Visible Scars) $6.98 More industrial-tinged metallic weirdness from No Visible Scars. This tape is the first release from Seattle duo Slumber Room, featuring members of black metallers Vetus Obscurum and In Memorium and death metal freaks Lord Gore. With Slumber Room, these guys go in a totally different direction from their other projects, creating a kind of stripped-down, low-fi industrial black metal that puts more emphasis on the industrial aspect of their music. An Aborym clone this is not. The morose, mechanical dirges and pounding ritual atmosphere that oozes through this tape is much closer in feel to bands like Deathstench, Welter In Thy Blood, Aderlating and similar purveyors of mutant necro-dirge weirdness. The opening title track is all distant deep crooning and chorus-drenched guitar chords, sort of resembling some of the later Swans stuff in a weird kind of way, a super short track that clocks in at just under two minutes. And then the full band kicks in with Some One...Everyone...No One..., and were suddenly transported into a droning, terminally grim black dirge of pounding drum machine rhythms, distorted blackened shrieks and almost Burzumic fuzz-drenched riffs that shift into slower, more doom-laden passages as the song progresses. Theyve got that industrial black metal feel going on, the guitars have a cold, processed feel, but the slow, dragging pace of Slumber Rooms droning dirges have more in common with the pounding mechanistic metal of early Pitch Shifter. The following track Our Shrine is softer stuff, an instrumental track where electric piano and effects-laden guitar team up for a somber, downcast melody that swirls around for a couple of minutes, while both of the last two tracks Under The Dying Moon and Stellar Death Rites return to that industrial black metal sound, and are in fact the most blackened tracks on the tape, each an almost Mysticum-esque blast of frostbitten guitars and pounding monotonous drum machines, hissing processed vocals and bizarre vocal effects, the songs generally creeping along at a slower pace but occasionally ruptured with blasts of blazing speed and violence. The last song in particular struck a chord with me, its slightly dissonant guitar melodies casting an unearthly glow over the final minutes of the tape as the band continues to drone on with their somber, sorrowful blackened dirge, burning out into blackness at the very end. Released as a pro-manufactured tape in an edition of one hundred copies, packaged in a clear oversized plastic case. EARTHLORD Earthmission CASSETTE (No Visible Scars) $4.98 Earthmission is a two-song cassingle (yes, an actual cassingle) from the short-lived but promising Connecticut band Earthlord, who blended together spacey dope-fueled atmosphere and traces of cosmic psychedelia into their heavy, traditional doom metal. These two songs appear to be all that was recorded by the band, which featured members of likeminded doom/heavy metal throwbacks Hour Of 13 and Vestal Claret and, most surprisingly, bassist Fred Melillo, who had previously played in the obscure Connecticut proto-metal/heavy prog rock band Legend, who released an album of amazing prog-tinged Manilla Road-esque proto-metal titled From The Fjords back in 1979. In fact, the timing of this cassettes release couldnt be better, as a vinyl reissue of Legends lost classic recently surfaced in late 2013 on Acid Nightmare Records, and has been steadily getting a lot of love from fans of offbeat private-press metal. Along with nimble-fingered Legend bassist Fred Melillo, Earthlord also featured frontman Phil Swanson, whose Ozzy-esque croon has glazed a number of killer doom metal albums in recent years, and Simon Tuozzoli, a fellow member of Swansons Vestal Claret. This two-song cassette contains the only material that these guys managed to record in 2007 before putting the band on hiatus, both songs originally intended for a vinyl split with Vestal Claret that ended up being cancelled. The first song is the heaviest of the two; God Of Antiquity has that heavy, thickly produced sound that a lot of the early 90s Maryland doom bands had, blending huge Sabbathian riffage with metallic rock hooks and soaring chorus-drenched leads, the sound thick and burly and catchy; Swansons vaguely Ozzy-esque vocals are right at home among this sort of grooving doom metal thud. The b-side jam He Who Is Of The Water though is a little more soulful, a little more languid, but still pretty heavy, with some killer grungy guitar soloing and more of that chorus0-drenched sound; Swansons singing on this song sounds virtually ectoplasmic, and it hints at an interesting direction the band could have taken their music in if they had kept at it. An interesting trad-doom curio, fans of bands like The Obsessed, Spirit Caravan, Internal Void and anything that Swanson is involved with are likely going to dig this. Comes in a classic cassingle-style o-card package, and is limited to one hundred copies.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 03:26:07 +0000
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