VIDEO PREMIERE: Grave Lines Live Session, "Loathe/Displace"

London/Brighton heavy contingent Grave Lines who released latest album ‘Fed Into The Nihilist Engine' in the first half of 2018 have announced UK tour dates for February 2019 with Dystopian Future Movies. To help promote this upcoming tour Grave Lines have filmed some very slick live session videos and today you can check out part 1 of the session featuring “Loathe / Displace” below, vocalist Jake Harding commented on the sessions

'As something a bit different we thought it would be cool to capture the more ambient side of Grave Lines with some live sessions. Our good friend Rob "longarms" kindly let us come and do it on his beaten up old canal boat so in a lapse of judgement we decided to go and do it on one of the hottest days of the year.

Sweating bullets and burning in the sun aside we had a blast and the videos speak for themselves.

These are the 'interludes' from our album which tell their own individual stories and at the same time act as part of the narrative of 'Fed into the nihilist engine'. They explore the human relationship with negativity, but act as isolated thoughts within us.

This first track was a bit of an experiment by Julia with synths and took us all by surprise but very quickly became an integral part of the album so it’s been great working it into our live set.

As is always the case with our band this filming was made possible by our talented friends.

Camera work by the amazing Josh gaunt and Florence Pellacani.
Sound recorded and mixed by the unstoppable Chris West (check out his new project Crawling For Carrion here

UK Live Rituals dates w/ Dystopian Future Movies:

Thursday 7th February, Record Junkee, Sheffield

Friday 8th February, Wharf Chambers, Leeds

Saturday 9th February, Black Heart, Camden, London

Sunday 10th February, Chameleon Arts Cafe, Nottingham

Band info: facebook

VIDEO PREMIERE: self confessed Dark Witch Doom Duo Blacklab release "His Name Is..."

Hailing from Osaka, Japan self confessed Dark Witch Doom Duo Blacklab,  deliver  a full frontal assault of distorted riffs, howls and ghostly vocals, as well as bags of riot girrl attitude and lo-fi bravado.  Having released their new record “Under The Strawberry Moon 2.0” on July 20^th via New Heavy Sounds, expect the usual nod to Sabbath but Blacklab have a vibe and experimental undertow not to dissimilar countrymen to Boris  incorporating elements of doom, drone, sludge and black metal to produce some truly unique.  This first Blacklab release on NHS, is a version of their ‘Under The Strawberry Moon’ album which was released in tiny numbers on CD only in Japan, a pull together of previous tracks and new songs recorded over 2017.

Remixed by Wayne Adams @ Bear Bites Horse Studio to maximum effect, make no mistake this band will not disappoint and today at THE SLUDGELORD we are very fortunate to be able to debut Blacklab’s new video for the track “His Name Is ..” which you can check out below. 

Blacklab are: Yuko Morino | guitar, vocals and Chia Shiraishi | drums.  This is what the band had to say about the track

“His Name Is ..”.is a rough rock tune, which has an irregular meter and shuffle beat. The lyrics are written in Nihon-go. The song mixes melodic and barking vocals to add a hardcore element, which is very much part of our sound.  It's the song composed soon after we formed the band, and it's one of the songs that we often play when we're asked for encore.

Band info: Facebook || BandCamp

ALBUM REVIEW: Grave Lines, “Fed Into The Nihilist Engine"

By: Ernesto Aguilar

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 04/05/2018

Label: New Heavy Sounds

Grave Lines demonstrates irrefutable growth, confidence and deftness with a palette of emotional peaks and valleys.

“Fed Into The Nihilist Engine” CD//DD//2LP track listing:

1). Failed Skin

2). Shame/Retreat

3). Self Mutilation by Fire and Stone

4). Loss/Betrayal

5). Silent Salt

6). Loathe/Displace

7). The Greae

8). Guilt/Regret

9). The Nihilist Engine

The Review:

The United Kingdom's doom masters Grave Lines smashed their way onto the scene in 2016 with its "Welcome to Nothing," a debut that reveled in its sweltering power – blistering drums courtesy of Julia Owen, Jake Harding's disparate vocal attack and a style that puts a noise/sludge pace on you that would make Vasyl Lomachenko himself proud. And, happily, the band is back with"Fed Into The Nihilist Engine," a rugged return if ever there was one.

Grave Lines is intriguing because of its changeups. "Failed Skin," the album's 14-plus-minute opener, is by far the longest cut, and it is melting as it is impregnable. Don't let its gentle, loping opening chords fool you. As the bass kicks in, Harding descends from the heavens, with his punctuated and flaring vocals that rattle you out of your slumber. That clarity of voice carries on to "Shame Retreat," an ethereal song that makes the most of its strengths.

Grave Lines is unctuous with its heavy tracks, which slosh in hardcore influences, such as "Self Mutilation by Fire and Stone." You also witness promise with its gracefully constructed folk-tinged songs like "Loss Betrayal" and "Loathe Displace." The sharper among us might ask if the group is pining to be a metal team or more a hard rock band with departures like this. And in fairness there may be some attention to album arrangement, or else it becomes heavy-to-lighter-to-heavy-to-lighter song, rinse and repeat. Nevertheless the tracks themselves are strong, devouring your ears and imagination.

Now into its second album, Grave Lines demonstrates irrefutable growth, confidence and deftness with a palette of emotional peaks and valleys. As "The Nihilist Engine" closes out the album, it is impossible to avoid the many paths before the group, as well as one's own curiosity for what's next.

“Fed Into The Nihilist Engine”is available here

Band info: bandcamp|| facebook

ELEVEN IS ONE LOUDER: Rob Hoey (Limb) picks 5 artists & bands he loves that had a great impact on heavy music... Without using mountains of distortion (and in lots of cases, none)

By: Rob Hoey

As we (Limb) get ready to release our third album “Saboteurs of the Sun...” (available here) ...I thought I'd chat about some of our influences who didn't need modern distortion to get heavy. 

A lot of people who read this will already be very aware of these artists and in writing it I thought 'if I were to read this would I find this kind of thing patronising'? Then I realised that if I hadn't heard of some of these people I wouldn't be able to appreciate the music we have today, so here's to them... The scoundrels, cads, olden day punks who said 'fuck you, I won't do what you tell me' and started something that we can still see / feel today in the roots of all that is sonically heavy. 

So even if you've heard all these before, click the links and refresh your memory while we look back and take our hats off to the men and women who carved out the path we now tread! 

1 Screamin' Jay Hawkins (1929 - 2000)

If you like Alice Cooper, Marilyn Manson, Ghost, Kiss or any other shock rockers then you have this man to thank! Before heading to tinkle the ivories, he would emerge from a coffin onstage and wore gold and leopard skin costumes and had voodoo stage props, such as his smoking skull on a stick (called Henry). Alongside all his stage antics he had scream (hence the nickname) that would give Noddy Holder a run for his money. 

Check Out – “I Put A Spell On You”

2 Jerry Lee Lewis (1935 - Present) 

The 'killer' as he is known (and nearly for very good reason, he tried to kill Elvis, look it up) is a controversial figure and no mistake. He is a wild and unbridled force of nature and pushed rock and roll to its limits at a time that America just wasn't ready for it. He once shot a gun to wake up tired party goers who couldn't keep up with him. Any live performance of his will give you a good indication of how energised he was. Also, he played piano like he'd made a deal with Lucifer himself. (you can still catch him live if you're in the states) 

Check Out – “Wild One” 

3 Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883)

Way before the metal zone pedal (or the DOD grunge for that matter) there were people who were determined to get tone henge blasting so had to be inventive. How I hear you cry? Load the bottom end of your orchestra with things like the 'octobass' a giant version of the double bass played with a bow that would make even SunnO))) smile (ok maybe not, too doom!). Richard Wagner was the king of heavy back in the day, those days being the middle of the 1800's. He was rattling the rafters way before Boris came along and showed us how to get a bass tone that would rattle your teeth straight down your neck! 

Check out – “Entrance Of The Gods Into Valhalla”

4 Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915 - 1973)

So... A white Gibson LesPaul SG with three humbuckers sounds like something Zep or The Darkness might bust out on stage but long before all that came a gospel rock whirlwind in the shape of

Sister Rosetta Tharpe and man could she play. She cemented her place in rock and roll history when she embarked upon a European tour with Muddy Waters in 1963 (her UK debut was in Manchester) she noted as an influence by prominent British guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards

Check Out – “Up Above My Head”

5 Lead Belly (1888 - 1949)

Here we have Lead Belly a ne'er do well, moonshine swilling multi instrumentalist who saw his fair share of hardship which lead him to sing about women, liquor, prison life, and racism. He was also known to write songs about people in the news, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler and Howard Hughes. You might know him best from Nirvana'scover of “My Girl (where did you sleep last night)”. They don't come much rougher round the edges than Lead Belly and if you scratch the surface of his prolific song library you'll find it paints a picture of man who lived hard and played harder. 

Check Out – “Black Girl (in the pines)”

Band info: facebook

TRACK PREMIERE: London heavyweights Limb debut "Wych Elm"

London heavyweights Limb set the controls for the heart of the sun with their third record on New Heavy Sounds.  “Saboteurs of the Sun” sees Limb hurl themselves skyward to discover new worlds within the riff–time continuum.  Building on their previous two records, which positioned the band in the thick of the UK heavy fuzz scene, the band now move beyond their sludge–doom origins to explore a cosmos of bubbling synthesizers, screaming organs, ecstatic choirs and galaxies of wild unidentified sounds, but feaer not the grooves, the power and the chops are all there in spades – helped by a masterful production from Russ Russell (Napalm Death, At the Gates, etc.)  “Saboteurs Of The Sun” will land on May 25^th and today you can get your first taste of the record  with an exclusive stream of the track “Wych Elm” below.  Preorders are being taken here

Singer Rob Hoey had the following to say about track:

"In 1943, a woman’s dead body was found stuffed inside the hollow trunk of a wych elm tree in the West Midlands. No-one knows who she was. Perhaps she was a Nazi spy, perhaps a local prostitute, perhaps the victim of an occult killing – after all, her severed hand was found elsewhere, consistent with the ‘Hand of Glory’ ritual. The mystery remains very much alive through the enigmatic reappearance of graffiti asking, “Who put Bella in the wych elm?” We still want to know."

Limb Live Rituals:

​

Sat 19 May - London, Underdog Gallery

Fri 25 May - Bournemouth, The Anvil

Sat 26 May - Southampton, Firehouse

Sun 27 May - Cardiff, Tiny Rebel, Cardiff Psych and Noise Fest

Band info: facebook

TRACK PREMIERE: Limb cover Andrew WK's "Party Hard" to coincide with Euro Tour Dates

In their first release since the 2015 album ‘Terminal’ (review here) Limb have recorded a version of Andrew WK’s‘Party Hard’ and put their own twist on proceedings. In a light-hearted and momentary move away from their doom and stoner roots Limb have put together this track to advertise their upcoming dates which have been booked for mainland Europe but start with a one off show at Hard Rock Hell’s ‘Doom vs Stoner’ festival in Sheffield this weekend. You can check  out the track below and you can Catch them partying hard here…

Saturday 1 October – Hard Rock Hell, (w/ Orange Goblin, Conan, Vodun & more), Sheffield (UK)

Saturday 15 October – Beta2300, Copenhagen (DK)
Wednesday 19 October - Hafenklang, Hamburg (GER)
Thursday 20 October - Tiefgrund (w/ Fistula, Grime), Berlin (GER)
Friday 21 October - Dynamo (w/ Monolord, Earth Ship, Zaum, Bark), Eindhoven (NL)
Saturday 22 October – Into The Void Festival(W/ loads!), Leeuwarden (NL)

Band info: Facebook || BandCamp