ALBUM REVIEW: Vile Creature, "Cast of Static and Smoke"

By: Daniel Jackson

Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 7/3/2017

Label: Halo of Flies |

Dry Cough Records

On ‘Cast of Static and Smoke’, Vile Creature have given us not just a fantastic piece of music, but a truly immersive experience. It’s an experience I encourage you all to let yourself get lost in it, in hopes that you’ll find the journey as rewarding as I have.

‘Cast of Static and Smoke’ CS//LP//DD track listing:

1. Water, Tinted Gold & Tainted Copper

2. Circuits, Bending & Breaking

3. Forest, Subsists as a Tomb

4. Sky, In Descending Pieces

The Review:

I’ve dreaded the prospect of writing about this album from some time now. Not because it isn’t great (it is), but because I feel so woefully under-qualified to write about it. From a purely musical or performance-centric standpoint; the album is very easy to process. ‘Cast of Static and Smoke’ is a gruelling, caustic doom metal album. Its ringing and corrosive chords and thunderous, colossal drumming speak loudly and clearly on its own. But there’s so much more going on that informs and influences the music, and that’s where I know this review will come up short.

In broad strokes, ‘Cast of Static and Smoke’ is an album about sentient machines undertaking an arduous journey through a decimated wasteland in the hopes of exploring the new freedom given to them after an unlikely twist of fate. Of course, there’s a lot more going on within the story, particularly as it relates to how each machine responds to their new freedom, and in turn how their actions speak to the way we as human beings respond to strife, or how we treat people in oppressed groups. But again, there are many better, smarter people writing about the concept behind the album, and can write about these topics in ways I’m simply not talented enough to manage.

‘Cast of Static and Smoke’ is as fully realized a doom album as you’ll hear this year. There’s an outstanding amount of effort that went into the album’s story, written by KW and Vic themselves and edited by Ed Blair and Jack Solar, and also including narration and an audiobook presentation of the story from Erin Severson of sludge band Former Worlds. Everything from the album cover to the illustrations accenting the short story come courtesy of brilliant artist Stephen Wilson of Unknown Relic. There’s plenty to digest before you even press play.

Then there’s the music, which is as emotionally wrenching and unflinchingly earnest as doom and sludge metal can be. Every downbeat feels like forward momentum, though it’s painfully earned. Each chord or plucked note feels like it was drenched in filth and misery and smashed into the pickups of KW’s guitar. Vic’s commanding performance behind the drum kit devastates, with each strike unloading some extra burden, each beat choice feeling carefully considered and tailored to everything it supports. Even the album’s closing riff, carrying something of a more final and triumphant tune as it fades away; it still bears the damage of the machines’ journey with it. Acrid, layered howls sing us into oblivion like a demonic greek chorus and we’re left to reflect on all that Vile Creature have left us to consider.

On ‘Cast of Static and Smoke’, Vile Creature have given us not just a fantastic piece of music, but a truly immersive experience. It’s an experience I encourage you all to let yourself get lost in it, in hopes that you’ll find the journey as rewarding as I have.

You can pick up a digital or LP copy in North America here. In the UK/Europe, you can find it here.

Band info: Facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: Leechfeast, "Neon Crosses"

By: Stephen Murray

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 30/03/2018

Label: Dry Cough Records |

Rope And Guillotine

Taken altogether, the vacillation between violence and misery is compelling

“Neon Crosses” DD//LP track listing:

1). Sacrosanct

2). Halogen

3). Tar

4). Razor Nest

The Review:

It’s not that I would nail myself to the masochist mast, but I have to admit there is something ritualistically cleansing about laying down in a dark room, depriving all senses except hearing, and shattering that peaceful seclusion with a high volume deluge of grisly, bone-biting aural violence. Despite the horrific grime one is subjected to, the effect is one of paradoxical cleanliness and peace. But for the ritual to work it must be pure; nothing watered down into a thin, homeopathic tincture; it must be something viscous and foul-tasting that lets you know that you’ve been medicined, a spiking that lets you know you’ve been spoken to. If you need this treatment as much as I do, then “Neon Crosses” is your draught.

This is Leechfeast’s first full-length for five years (their second overall), and their first release since the split with New Zealand's now defunct grime lords Meth Drinkerback in 2015. Perhaps significantly, this is the first recording since Hans Wubs took over the sticks from Marko Šajn in an otherwise remarkably consistent line-up since their nascence in 2010.

As the title suggests, it cuts an urban path. For Slovenia’s Leechfeast, the children of the night are not wolves, but other predators skulking between the streetlights. They represent the mould growing in the gutters, the weeds pushing through the concrete, blackened foil in the alleys and the screams of victims slapping back off wet brick, steel and glass.

At first harken, I quickly understand why comparisons have been drawn between “Neon Crosses” and the excoriating sounds of Coughand Moss, but it is no carbon copy. Instead, the band manage to steer their sound safely across the ever busier shipping lanes of modern doom, deftly avoiding collision with the other lumbering tankers which seem to be riding in each other’s wakes.

An example of this subtle divergence comes on the second track, ‘Halogen’. Its linchpin riff is like someone heartlessly slinging on a string of Reggie Dixon numbers when you're too goofed to intervene, leaving you to be waltzed through to some dreadful other dimension.

Highlight song, ‘Razor Nest,’ well positioned at the end of the record, opens with gloomily melodic, reverb-washed singing, drawing parallels with 40 Watt Sun, except with all the hope for tomorrow extinguished. Then despair gives way to anger once more and the vocals lash out again, the guitars moving from minors to chromatics, the whole peppered with samples from what sounds to be space age American public information films. The effect is that of a broken emergency broadcast system piping messages exhorting calm which echo through the empty streets of a post-neutron bombed world.

At no point does “Neon Crosses” feel protracted, each of the eight to ten minute tracks is extremely well judged; the bars allotted to the changing riffs and motifs is perfect and the sound achieved in the studio and in post-production is crisp, capturing some of that high-end fizz that gives character to otherwise bass rich guitar tone and slow skin pummeling.

The record invokes that horrid yet splendid feeling of your flesh being torn from you in long, misshapen strips, and then dresses the wounds in melancholic, chant-like singing and single picked guitar lines more apt to surrendering to the darkness than exalting it. Taken altogether, the vacillation between violence and misery is compelling. Would definitely recommend for your next isolation tank session

“Neon Crosses” is available here

Band info: bandcamp|| facebook

REVIEW: Cloud Rat/Disrotted - "Split LP"

By: Charlie Butler

Album Type: Split 12”

Date Released: 02/06/2017

Label: Dry Cough Records |

Halo of Flies

This is an awe-inspiring release from two incredible bands who can seemingly do no wrong at the moment and continue to deliver an embarrassment of heavy riches in 2017.

"Clout Rat/Disrotted" Split DD//LP track listing:

1). Cloud Rat– “Holding the Picture”

2). Disrotted– “Disrotted”

The Review:

Cloud Rat and Disrotted continue their intense 2017 release schedules with a killer split LP of contrasting styles. This split has come into being due to the strong bond between the two bands and while it may seem a strange stylistic pairing in theory it works a treat in practice.

Michigan’s Cloud Ratdepart from their usual format of short, sharp bursts of mayhem and deliver one eighteen minute monster. “Holding The Picture” begins in familiar territory, a whirlwind blur of chaotic screamo and relentless grindcore. The volume soon dips and the tempo decreases as the track develops into a slow-burning epic that smoulders with restrained power. This more melodic approach recalls Converge’s calmer moments delivered against a barren dustbowl backdrop reminiscent of Earth. It is a breathtaking achievement to create a beast of such sublime complexity and weighty emotional impact from the band’s minimal set-up of vocals, drums and guitar augmented only by occasional piano. This may not be Cloud Rat at their heaviest but they ably demonstrate that they lose none of their intensity and impact when they push their sound into quieter and more experimental realms.

Disrotted’s contribution to this split is twenty three minutes of slow-motion terror entitled “Disrotted”.  The Chicagotrio deal in a potent blend of Burning Witch / Monarch! style drone doom that creates maximum impact from minimal motion. Once the band launch into their sluggish, broken groove of feedback-drenched riffs and primal drums there is no escape from its dark density. The passage of time becomes irrelevant as they subject the listener to an experience that is crushingly bleak yet strangely soothing.

This is an awe-inspiring release from two incredible bands who can seemingly do no wrong at the moment and continue to deliver an embarrassment of heavy riches in 2017.

“Cloud Rat/Distrotted” is available here(UK/Europe) & (US/ROW) here

Band info: Cloud Rat || Disrotted

RIFF REWIND (18/07/2013): On Pain of Death - "Year Naught Doom"

Formed in the boggiest of the boggy depths of Irelandin March '08, On Pain of Death play slow and twisted doom/sludge metal. The band played their first gig in June '08 and recorded their self-titled first demo over that same weekend and the next in Oaks Recording, Enniskillen, NI.

The band continued to play throughout the Summer and returned to Oaks at the end of September to record their next E...P which features one slab of degrading filth called "Rotting in a Tomb of Depravity". Not happy with the outcome of the recorded EP, OPoD decided to shelf the release with an intention to rework and re-record the track for a future release. A cover version of the Sepulturatrack “Troops of Doom” was recorded and released on vinyl by Blind date Records in December '09. The release featured bands such as Moloch, Thou, Aguirre, Loss and Hey Colossus all doing doomed out covers.

In the latter half of 2010 early 2011 OPoDrecorded their first album entitled "Year Naught Doom". With Handshake Inc. on board "Year Naught Doom" was released as a free download in late 2012 and subsequently released on tape in the summer of 2013 by Dry Cough Records and on LP via Sentinel Records.  Still considered an active band, but yet to release any new material for 5 years, I feel it is time to remind you all just how disgustingly bleak this album was and perhaps reignite the spark within the band to follow up this stunning record. 

Today we are rewinding the riffs back 4 years to the day in order present “Year Naught Doom”. So if you missed it the first time, be sure to remedy your error by checking out our review in full below. 

By: Matt Fitton

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released:3/7/2013

Label: Dry Cough Records (Tape) |

Sentinel Records (LP)



A mind melting and deeply intoxicating injection of Sludge and Doom, You'll need to watch Disney films for a week straight afterwards just to recover from the whole damned thing. Highly recommended.

“Year Naught Doom” CS//DD track listing:

1). Year Naught Doom (11:28)

2). Tell Your God to Be Ready For Blood (13:14)

3). It Came From the Bog (17:42)

The Review:

Ireland can kick out some noise when it wants to (see: Slomatics), and some of its filthiest noise in recent years has been produced by Sludge / Doom dealers On Pain of Death. Their current opus of depraved sick riffery is 'Year Naught Doom'. It saw a vinyl release at the tail end of 2012, but is being released on tape by the mighty Dry Cough. So let's get into it, shall we?

What you get for your cash here is 3 tracks of complete Doom horror to sink your fangs into, or whatever else you might be sporting. 42 minutes of harrowing sounds to wake the dead, and probably drive the living insane.

First track shares the album title and commences this ritual with suitably slow tendencies. Soaked in atmosphere and the potential for menace, it'd probably burst into flames if it walked into direct sunlight. It rolls on at an ominous pace, heavy as hell and full of feel. The low end that this band has is thick and syrupy, just the way I like it. The riffs are droning and the drumming pounds more like a curse is being banged into existence. If you listened to this enough it might give you an infection of some kind. It's sick, in a beautiful way.

'Tell Your God to Ready For Blood' is even more destructively slow and torturous. You constantly get the feeling that something very bad is about to happen, and when it kicks in even only slightly, the effect will still produce permanent damage in your ears if played too loud. The vocals are hissing and delivered with absolute venom. They'll haunt you. By the end it's so heavy that the cup on my desk nearly went all Jurassic Park.

The album rounds out with nearly 18 minutes of 'It Came From The Bog'. I can only imagine that the 'it' in question is the sound that this band commits to murderous tape. Like the death throes of an ancient being, heard across time and space and recorded in Ireland. It's really good!

Slow, winding and intense, it's an experience that your ears will beg you to cease, and your dark heart will implore you to let continue. The feedback at the end will rupture your arteries.

I seriously advise that you get this latest offering from On Pain of Death however you can. A mind melting and deeply intoxicating injection of Sludge and Doom, weighing in more heavily on the latter. You'll need to watch Disney films for a week straight afterwards just to recover from the whole damned thing. Highly recommend

Band info: Facebook