TOP 16 ALBUMS: THE SOUR 16 (November 2017)

As we enter the countdown to Christmas and with a mere 17 days to go it is time to present 16 of the best albums from September, it is time for your SOUR 16. 

You know the drill by now, each month you the reader are unwittingly compiling a list of the top16 records of the month, covering all genres of metal.  Is it not a chart, in which reviewers or contributors extol their opinion about their favourite music.  To put it simply, THE SOUR 16 are the records that have been trending the most at SLUDGELORD HQ.

The results are compiled based on the amount of page views the reviews have received and are then calibrated into the list below.  All reviews can be viewed by clicking the artwork and we have included album streams wherever possible. (Total views since their publication are highlighted in the red)

16). Sect – “No Cure for Death” (823)

Sect have set the standard for hardcore music and what it should aspire to in 2017. If you’re looking to heavy music with a message, look no further than “No Cure for Death”.

15). Slabdragger & Wren - “Mothers Of The Beef And The Magic Of Invention” [Split] (874)

Both bands deliver the best kind of cover version; one that takes the source material and imbues it with their own unique spirit to create something new and exciting.  An essential purchase for any fans of the UK heavy underground and maybe it’ll turn some old Zappa and Beefheart heads towards the sludgier side of life too

14). Cannibal Corpse - "Red Before Black" (938)

Once again, Cannibal Corpse have crushed all in their wake and returned as conquering anti-heroes of the death metal genre.  Cannibal Corpse remain the death metal band by which many other death metal bands are judged and remain my go-to band of choice if I want to listen to something extreme, violent, uncompromising and also oddly, inexplicably, insanely listenable.

13). Hooded Priest - "The Hour Be None" (959)

This is doom metal that will appeal to anyone with a sense of theatre and anyone who wants to bang their head as well; there is some great metal on offer here. Huge and sprawling in its ambition, “The Hour Be None” is a doom tour de force and I recommend it highly.

12). Amenra - "Mass VI" (1054)

Amenra’s music is real and comes across as brutally honest. The formula (sonic + emotional heft) = (a heavy album) is one that’s been done many times before, but what Amenra does that sets them apart from the pack is the diligence they use when drinking from the well of inspiration. Amenra makes their listener feel and live with them. This keeps Amenra in touch with why they started making music in the first place. It’s this artistic integrity that helps make “Mass VI” what it is. 

11). Pale Horseman - "The Fourth Seal" (1084)

Pale Horseman offers a special sort of heft to their music, with mesmerizing guitars convulsing, vocals crunching  and the drums creating a war beat that is stifling in weight.

10). Fister & CHRCH – “Fister/CHRCH” (Split LP) (1120)

Over the course of nearly forty minutes, CHRCH and Fister, employing different sonic palettes and lineups, craft a perfect split for the moment: unholy, polluted, funereal and dismal – a requiem for humanity’s end times that is as beautiful as it is ugly.

9). Manilla Road - "To Kill A King" (1205)

In summary, To Kill A King is a superb and epic metal album, forged from the finest steel.

8). Dead Quiet – “Grand Rites” (1255)

All of the nuance and balance on this record really make it an experience that never bogs the listener down. It is for these reasons, that Dead Quiet’s “Grand Rites” is one of the best Canadian Metal records of the year.

7). Purple Hill Witch - "Celestial Cemetery" (1256)

From the Deep Purple-indebted organ intro, to the bluesy pentatonic riffing, there’s no doubt that the latest LP from Norway’s Purple Hill Witch is pure retro-metal worship.  The pervasive garage metal swagger elevates some pretty raw material and proves that they have the chops to be a really excellent outlier in the doom metal underground

6). Clouds Taste Satanic - "The Glitter of Infinite Hell" (1381)

Clouds Taste Satanic’s blend of doom, stoner and sludge chords, capacious basslines and drums set an imposing climate that sets them  apart from their peers. Each cut here feels distilled down to the pitched greatness of its many influences. Guitars simmer like the hunt during a horror movie and by the albums conclusion, chances are your mind will be thoroughly mashed.

5). Converge - "The Dusk In Us" (1897)

Today, with random acts of violence, anger and pessimism dotting our timelines, maybe Converge just now seems like a soundtrack to our contemporary apocalypse

4). Godflesh - "Post Self" (2301)

It may be a disturbing, challenging last will and testament of humanity’s futurist hopes and dreams, but “Post Self” is an invigorating, complex, and honest piece of industrial metal.  Perhaps most importantly, in a genre that can be glutted with repetitive speed metal riffs and samples of shouting despots, Godflesh stands as one of the smartest bands working today.

3). Norilsk - "Le Passage des Glaciers" (2752)

French canadian doom duo Norilsk return from a two-year layoff with a surprising new album, one that gives a reengaged sound to the pair's signature style.  Norilsk manages to be bold without being alienating, and that is indeed refreshing.

2). Electric Wizard - "Wizard Bloody Wizard" (9121)

 “Wizard Bloody Wizard” transcends whatever the in-thing of the moment is, and focuses instead on musicianship, the album's all-analog approach creates a warm, vintage sound for the songs and on the whole Electric Wizard feels re-energized, whilst  remaining true to their seedy pedigree

1). Morbid Angel - "Kingdoms Disdained" (28760)

This album is a statement of intent, placing the focus on convulsive rhythm changes and dissonant, jagged riffs over accessibility.  ‘Kingdoms Disdained’ is Morbid Angel's most uncompromising album of their career and their best album in nearly twenty years, and I don’t consider that light praise.

A big thank you as always to our amazing writers, your dedication knows no boundaries and for that I am truly grateful.  Novembers 2017’s “SOUR 16” features reviews by:  Richard Maw, Ernesto Aguilar, Daniel Jackson, Mark Ambrose, Victor Van Ommen, Charlie Butler & Mark Tremblay

ALBUM REVIEW: Monte Luna - "Monte Luna"

By: Mark Ambrose

Album Type: Full-length

Date Released: 02/09/2017

Label: Indepedent

With a little bit of trimming, their debut would be a contender for breakout of the year.  As it stands, this should portend greatness for a duo as eclectic and skilled as any I’ve heard in 2017.

“Monte Luna” CD//DD//CS track listing

1). The Burning of Elohim

2). Nameless City

3). 6000 Year March

4). Nightmare Frontier

5). Inverted Mountain

6). The End of Beginning

The Review

               

This year has been an absolute banger when it’s come to excellent records.  With so much brutal filth to laud,  Owlcrusher, Belus, Shroud Eater, and Fisterall put out shatteringly exceptional releases. 

With a self-released, self-titled debut LP, Monte Luna throw their hat in the power duo ring and perform admirably, a psychedelic, spacey blast of eclectic stoner metal, Monte Luna goes all in with six tracks that range from blast beat fury to soulful blues riffage.

It’s tempting to think “The Burning of Elohim”, the shortest track (at nearly five minutes), is an introduction for the massive cuts that follow.  But it’s too full on its own to be a mere intro cut.  Clarke’s abrupt shifts between shriek and croon are almost disarming, but ultimately a real asset.  His dexterity in guitar styles serves as an guiding principle for Monte Luna, as Phil Hook can instantly lock into a bluesy, soulful swing or pummel through punishing blast beats.  On “Nameless City”, a thirteen minute doom jam centered around beefy riffing and Clarke’s grungey, bluesy vocal, Hook stands out with precise but loose meat and potatoes rock drumming that serves the doom fretwork, especially when guest guitarist Jon-Paul Girard goes for an extended wah-wah jaunt through pentatonic scales loaded with some vintage Blue Cheer fuzz.

               

The feedback-heavy martial tone of “6000 Year March” sounds like the music an orc would blast before heading into battle, complete with shrieking tri-tone riffs and a husky, yowling vocal delivery from Clarke.  The ambient outro, layered with samples of occult movie dialogue, feels a bit overlong, especially since the next track, “Nightmare Frontier”, is an abrupt departure.  Pushing his voice into soulful heights, Clarke almost sounds like Cedric Bixler-Zavala, albeit in a less falsetto register. The subdued bass and drum line, countered by a sinewy, sludgy riff, makes “Nightmare Frontier”an irresistible banger.  When the track culminates in an ascending guitar lead, there’s no doubt that this is the standout cut on the record.

               

If “Nightmare Frontier” is the catchiest cut, “Inverted Mountain” may be the absolute filthiest track.  Clarke pushes his vocals to shredded extremes, and the relentless feedback is molar rattling.  A downbeat midsection, seething with sonic manipulations courtesy of Hook, witnesses Clarke careening from forlorn wailing to sinister crooning, before launching into speed metal mania.  The end of this brutal sprint also highlights the one glaring issue of the record: the extended ambient codas.  When the following track, “The End of Beginning”, has its own mellow intro, the appended few minutes feel like a real drag.  Which is a shame considering the finale is a brutal assault on its own, vaulting from slow dirge to blast beat assault.  Clarke once again pushes his vocals to extremes, and his guitar ranges from ethereal to demonic.  That this stellar track has another outro – this time acoustic – only diminishes the transcendent, destructive finale.

               

When measured against the heft and might of the majority of this otherwise excellent debut, Monte Luna’ssonic noodlings are a bit nitpicky.  But the truth is that this stellar combo only obscures its own songwriting and performance chops.  The finale to “The End is Beginning” feels like the chaos and violence of Ragnarok itself… until they tack on a few extra bars and nature sounds.  With a little bit of trimming, their debut would be a contender for breakout of the year.  As it stands, this should portend greatness for a duo as eclectic and skilled as any I’ve heard in 2017.

“Monte Luna” is available here

Band info: bandcamp|| facebook

REVIEW: Fister & CHRCH - Fister/CHRCH (Split LP)

By: Mark Ambrose

Album Type:Split

Date Released:17/11/2017

Label: Battleground Records |

Crown & Throne Ltd

Over the course of nearly forty minutes, CHRCH and Fister, employing different sonic palettes and lineups, craft a perfect split for the moment: unholy, polluted, funereal and dismal – a requiem for humanity’s end times that is as beautiful as it is ugly.

“Fister/CHRCH” DD//LP track listing

1. CHRCH– “Temples”

2. Fister– “The Ditch”

The Review

Let’s talk metal review terminology.  Like so many fellow travelers in the trenches of modern heavy music, I find myself having to crack open a thesaurus to praise a new release and not fall upon my tried and true descriptors: punishing, brutal, transcendent, dissonant, complex, or simply “heavy as fuck”.  It’s a problem as old as criticism itself, intensified in a modern context because the aporia between “not listened” and “listened” is practically non-existent; if you have a few minutes and a smart phone you can listen to practically any piece of music ever created.  The role of the blogger or critic or (cringe) “rock journalist”, then is perhaps to magnify the relevant, the underrepresented, or the overlooked – maybe to shout down the pretenders and opportunists – and to still offer some enthusiastic “fuck yeahs” when nothing else will suffice.

So is the latest split from CHRCH and Fister a brutal, transcendent, dissonant, punishing slab of metal?  Fuck yeah it is.  Perhaps more exceptionally, it exemplifies the core sublime element of metal: sustained tension.  Over the course of nearly forty minutes, CHRCHand Fister, employing different sonic palettes and lineups, craft a perfect split for the moment: unholy, polluted, funereal and dismal – a requiem for humanity’s end times that is as beautiful as it is ugly.

Sacramento’s CHRCHare akin to a dual guitar wielding cousin to Bell Witch, painting in the same inverted sacral tones as the rightfully lauded duo.  The reverb heavy guitar and bass intro of their track, “Temples” has similar sonic qualities as the ‘Witch, but when the drums, vocals, and distortion kick in, CHRCH establishes itself as a five-headed beast.  For all the layers of dissonance seething under the surface of “Temples”, there is remarkable harmony between the dual guitars of Chris and Karl, buoyed by the rhythmic interplay of Ben and Adam.  If there was any hope or positivity in the harmonies at work in “Temples”, lead vocalist Eva lays waste with every rasped line and tortured shriek.  A haunting spoken word middle cemented the image of an unholy evangelist in my head, spewing atrocities before sliding into more subdued, but perhaps even more sinister homilies.  The nasty, sludgy closing section amps up the tension – mutating and evolving before collapsing into the same ethereal opening riff.  This return to origins creates a kind of time dilation effect, where 17 minutes seems to have passed in the blink of an eye.  It makes it that much easier to revisit “Temples” and discover new dark alcoves within.

With “The Ditch” Fister offers a mirror image to CHRCH’sharmonies and emotive reverb, screeching into life like a genetic hybrid birthed into a gutter.  Bassist Snarzyk’s vocals are fascinating in the same way watching a hook suspension performance is fascinating: it’s an uncanny glimpse at the human instrument’s capacity for punishment.  Snarzyk traverses every register, from low end growl to high end shriek, absolutely shredding his throat and the listeners’ ears with ever syllable.  The relentless six-minute assault of static and feedback makes Newstead’s tremolo guitar solo a nearly welcome respite, until he too pulls the rug out and pushes the sound back into harsh dissonance.  A long, nearly ambient bridge is a mercy, and amplifies the already unbearable tension.  When Fister launches back in, with Kirk Gatterer’s leviathan drum bashing and the screamed vocals now layered in a demonic choir of anguish, the feeling is nearly existential: there is no escape from the imminent rupture ahead.

Once again, it’s nearly impossible to praise these aural monuments to entropy without offering the same descriptors I give a lot of my favorite listens.  But perhaps it’s because these exceptional groups are pulling out the core anxieties of our present.  From spiritual collapse to relentless violence, CHRCHand Fisterare excavating the temples and ditches of the metal underground.  Experienced together, they serve as a perfect soundtrack to our culture of perpetual apocalypse.

“Fister/CHRCH” split 12" is available here & heresoon

Band info: Fister || Chrch

ALBUM REVIEW: Fistula - "The Shape of Doom to Cumm)))"

By: Hunter Young

Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 01/11/2016
Label: Totem Cat Records

“The Shape of Doom to Cumm)))” is dripping with sardonic hatred for scenesters and fad chasers, scrapping rusty barbed wire across the speakers as if to wound those who listen. They bring the noise, the hate, and will tell you to your face if there’s even a hint at being a douchebag.

“The Shape of Doom to Cumm))) LP track listing:

1). Serial Vapist

2). Promiscuity Ingenuity

3). Goat Brothel

4). Sabbath Wants To Do A Splitwith Me

5). Tough Guy

6). Black Maggot

7). Negative

The Review:

There is the sludge genre, and then there are bands that are sludge. One such band, and the only redeeming quality outside sports, is Ohio based Fistula. Known less for coming from the gutter than just simply crashing on its couch all the time, Fistulasimply drips with the scuzziest noise outside a grindcore club. They bring the noise, the hate, and will tell you to your face if there’s even a hint at being a douchebag (oh track one, "Serial Vapist", you scamp!); and to make matters worse, they just dropped a huge slab of greasy, queasy fuzz onto the scene: 'The Shape Of Doom To Cumm)))'!

Laden with everything they have come to purvey, 'The Shape Of Doom To Cumm)))' is an ode to all those bands and "artists" who seem to think an Orange amp and some gain make you something to give two rats asses about; hint: you matter not to the Void. “The Shape...” is dripping with sardonic hatred for scenesters and fad chasers, scrapping rusty barbed wire across the speakers as if to wound those who listen. Fistula deliver punk energy and some (heavily shop-soiled) bluesy riffage to bear, as on "Sabbath Wants to Do a Splitwith Me". They pull some truly Sabbathian riffs and tones out of their bag of tricks and rampage all over traditional Doom, while paying some heavy respects to the Iommi. The whole album just reeks of Doom, alongside their more signature scuzzy sound, and it's definitely at the forefront of tracks like "Sabbath..." and "Tough Guy", the middle siblings of the album. Classic Fistula fans (and there must be millions) don't be down trodden, as they still keep their fast paced, gritty sound throughout the album (tracks "Goat Brothel", "Black Maggot", and "Negative", which will have you in a pit in no time), interwoven with that heavy, fuzz-filled doom that they swear will CUMM))) ("Promiscuous Ingenuity", definite blankets of fleas, slow and fast). They haven't lost any edge in delving into the lo and slo, it's just simply a slower drag of their jagged knives across your wrists. Fistula has created a maelstrom of binge-fueled hell, and by god you need to bring more beer.

Along the lines of lyric content, Fistula makes Metal Hate Again with just about every track. They pick apart whatever and who/whomever they wish, like on "Serial Vapist" as they eviscerate the whole vaping phenomenon and the Hipster trends; and "Tough Guy", where they tackle internet tough guys who want to talk bigger than their britches fit. They call them out and tell them to come on or fuck off. And they even tackle the recent popularity of splits and the bands who hang off the undercarriage of the aforementioned band. Overall, they pretty much swing a whisky bottle (empty, of course) at everything popular and current, leaving no room for argument or misinterpretation as to where they can shove all those trends. The closing track, "Negative", also provides another Fistula toe tag: sound clips taken from outside sources, highlighting the barb-filled philippics like marbling in a good steak. 

Fistula has absolutely nailed it home with “The Shape of Doom to Cumm)))”,bringing with them an outlet for the stupidity running rampant nowadays. This album just further cements them as a band to be reckoned with, and one you should actively seek out and support, if they are spreading their filth, filthy sound out near you; They are currently on an European tour (as of this writing), so go check to see if the outbreak is stopping near you."

“The Shape of Doom to Cumm)))”is available on vinyl from tomorrow here

Band info: official|| facebook

FFO: Iron Monkey, Primitive Man, Goatsblood, Fister