6 LIVE REVIEWS: THE SLUDGELORD'S 666 PACK REVIEW (Psycho Las Vegas Special 2018)

Words & Photos: Nikos Mixas

It’s a special edition for the 666 PACK REVIEW this month!  THE SLUDGELORD attended Psycho Las Vegas recently, so this month we’re going to rate 6 bands that played the festival. Between the non-stop shenanigans and Instagram takeover, we found time to actually watch the bands. For future potential victims that submit material to THE SLUDGELORD for review, here’s some advice: This festival is where you want to be someday! If you’re new to this, each and every month we handpick 6 review submissions (this month six bands that played Psycho Las Vegas) and critique them by only using 6 words, then we rate them on a scale from 1 to 666!  Check out our Las Vegas themed rating scale below: 

1– It would have nicer if their tour bus got lost in the desert on the way to the festival.       

2– One of the Psycho Las Vegas guest DJs was Andrew W.K., he actually stirred up more excitement than the performance this band put on.      

3– It was kinda average, just like staying at The Excalibur Hotel and Casino these days…

4 – You know the feeling that you get free drinks while your gambling?  Yeahhhhh….       

5– This band deserves to have a Las Vegas casino named after them and they should be the house band. 

666– They hit the progressive jackpot (Enter ching! ching! ching! ching! money sounds here…)!  Viva Psycho Las Vegas and THE SLUDGELORD!

Caveat:  Even though the 666 PACK REVIEW is meant to offer humorous critique, there are no safe spaces here and your gripes will only make you sound like a bellyacher.  THE SLUDGELORD is a picky listener…and doesn’t care what you think of his opinions….

Goblin - Rating: 1

Horror soundtracks never sound so bad.

Sunn0))) – Rating: 4

No groove, no problem.  Drone on.

Danzig – Rating: 5

Playing “She Rides” earned this rating.

Elder – Rating: 666!

Most underrated band at this fest.

Indian – Rating: 5

This reunion was meant to be.

Batushka - Rating: 666!

Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Fuck yeah!!!

ALBUM REVIEW: Pissboiler - "In The Lair Of Lucid Nightmares"

By: Chris Bull

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 25/12/2017

Label: Third I Rex

Sweden's Pissboiler have crafted a brilliant album of terrifying proportions, creating a sense of tension and foreboding and pummelling the listener with sledgehammer riffs.

“In The Lair Of Lucid Nightmares” CD//DD track listing:

1. Ruins of the Past
2. Stealth
3. Pretend It Will End
4. Cutters

The Review:

There are 3 types of heavy bands; those which employ speed and ferocity, those whose use of atmosphere creates a tension and sense of foreboding and those who are slow and forceful, pummelling listeners with Sledgehammer riffs. On 'In The Lair Of Lucid Nightmares', Sweden's Pissboiler take the latter 2 and craft a brilliant album of terrifying proportions.

Creeping from the murky chasms, 'Ruins Of The Past' is 17 minutes of funeral procession-esque death/doom. Vocalist LG (no, not that LG) produces a guttural roar that sounds like it's bellowed from the 7th later of hell and the riffs saunter with My Dying Bridelike misery in tow. The production from band member Karl Wijk enhances each element with each instrument clinging to their own space while bleeding nicely into others. 'Stealth' comes as a bit of a surprise with it's lonely jazzy bass riff dripping with chorus and reverb and, at under 3 minutes, is the album's shortest track by far. The respite is short lived as 'Pretend It Will End'is utterly harrowing. Blood curdling growls and piercing shrieks team with suicide inducing, slow riffs before the bells toll and things take a slight turn with a riff reminiscent of Burning Witch. A very disturbing sample from a doctor talking to her patient, sets the tone for final track 'Cutters'; the atmosphere builds slowly with cavernous growls and swelling guitar drones and never stops the barrage of depressive doom. Some harsh screams burst through the bass heavy droning making for a truly unsettling experience.

For a fairly unknown band to create something this comprehensive (and very impressive) goes to show the talent that lurks in the darkest corners. If Sunn 0))) had released this, it would make the top 10 end of year lists of several well known publications, but for those of us who judge things on merit, it will most definitely be a contender, regardless of their standing.  

“In The Lair of Lucid Nightmares” is available here

Band info: facebook || bandcamp

ALBUM REVIEW: Mudbath - "Brine Pool"

By: Ernesto Aguilar

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 2/05/2017

Label: Saka Čost| GPS Prod|

Troffea Records Third-I-Rex |

Grains of Sand Records

While firmly a doom metal group, Mudbath is not afraid to introduce different elements. With a shrieking vocal approach reminiscent of black metal and flourishes you might otherwise associate with drone, Mudbath manages to make it work.

“Brine Pool” CD//DD//LP track listing:

               

1. Burn Brighter

2. End Up Cold

3. Seventh Circle

4. Zone Theory

5. Rejuvenate

6. Fire

The Review:

Doom metal has so many derivatives in part because it has a landscape open to broad interpretations. The morass of guitar, churn of a bass and crack from a drum kit can be shaped to head off in many directions. Thus you see artists like Paradise Lost, Isis, Sunn O))) and many more have their paths illuminated by doom as a foundation, only to establish fully formed reverberations distinct from their progenitor. This happening can be simultaneously joyful and infuriating, exciting or repulsive. You can fill in your own blanks as to who fits the positive as well as the negative ends of that spectrum.

France’s Mudbath is, likely for most listeners, going to be on the positive end.

Now on their third release, the foursome debuted in 2012 with an EP, followed by a 2015 full-length recording and now "Brine Pool," their 2017 presentation. While firmly a doom metal group, Mudbath is not afraid to introduce different elements. With a shrieking vocal approach reminiscent of black metal and flourishes you might otherwise associate with drone, Mudbath manages to make it work.

"Brine Pool"packs the most punch on songs like "Seventh Circle," a reference to Dante’s“Inferno”. There, Dante and Virgil discover the place in Hell intended to punish the violent, from the war-makers to the suicides to the blasphemers and the sodomites. Literary scholars have for decades plumbed the Inferno’s imagery, including its host of gruesome penalties in the Seventh Circle of Hell. It is fitting that this cut is at right about the release’s middle, because it feels like a climax of the despair and foreboding you hear from start to finish. You can almost feel as if the vocals came straight from pools of boiling blood Dante once imagined, or from Pholus, among the Seventh Circle’s patrolling centaurs, himself.

Whereas "Red Desert Orgy," their first release, had at many moments a slower, more raw build, and their "Corrado Zeller" sophomore had implications of dirge, Mudbath’s latest recording finds an intriguing merger of its past and present. The blues influences you might have heard from the band before remain strong on songs like "Fire" and elsewhere. The opening cut "End Up Cold"also launches with that bluesy seethe. Its crescendo, though, suggests a new maturity. The vocals by Mika, Flo and Luke jump out at you methodically. The bass and electronic touches added by Marco enhance the feeling of dread.

Although the songs still contain the rawness of old, there is an evolution afoot for Mudbath. Maybe the group, which had lineup changes in 2013, is just more comfortable in its own skin (insert death metal joke here). Or maybe it’s simply the camaraderie that suddenly blossoms in a new way after many live shows and studio time together. Whatever it is, "Brine Pool" marks an invigorating chapter for the French quartet. One has to be fascinated to see what comes next.

"Brine Pool" is available to buy here

Band info: bandcamp || facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: Darkest Hour - “Godless Prophets & the Migrant Flora”

By: Ben Fitts

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 10/03/2017

Label: Southern Lord

“Godless Prophets & the Migrant Flora” finds an exact middle ground between the elegant melodicism of Darkest Hour’s earlier work and the feral muscle of their previous album. The mixture is sure to please nearly all fans of the band, both old and new.  The result is twelve tracks that simultaneously capture Darkest Hour at both their most tuneful and their most assailing.

“Godless Prophets & the Migrant Flora” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1. Knife in the Safe Room
2. This Is The Truth
3. Timeless Numbers
4. None Of This Is The Truth
5. The Flesh & the Flowers of Death
6. Those Who Survived
7. Another Headless Ruler of the Used
8. Widowed
9. Enter Oblivion
10. The Last of the Monuments
11. In The Name Of Us All
12. Beneath It Sleeps

The Review

Since Darkest Hour strayed from their melodeath roots in favor a more commercial metalcore sound on their self-titled, eighth album in 2014, many new fans have flocked to the band’s base. However, older fans of their melodic death metal sound have been nervously twiddling their thumbs about what this would mean for the future of Darkest Hour’sdirection. That future arrives in the form of the Washington, D.C.based quintet’s ninth LP, “Godless Prophets & the Migrant Flora”, their first original release for Goatsnake/Sunn O))) guitarist Greg Anderson’s label Southern Lord Recordings. It is also their first album to feature Convergeguitarist Kurt Ballou behind the soundboard, and if the names associated with this album seem like they might be sending mixed messages about the album’s stylistic direction, that’s because they are.

“Godless Prophets & the Migrant Flora”finds an exact middle ground between the elegant melodicism of Darkest Hour’s earlier work and the feral muscle of their previous album. The mixture is sure to please nearly all fans of the band, both old and new. The vibrant, flowing guitar leads definitive of the band’s classic material reintroduce themselves on “Godless Prophets & the Migrant Flora”, which may be partially due to the return of former guitarist Kris Norris, who, while not a full member of the band again, does perform additional guitar layering on the album. “Godless Prophets & the Migrant Flora” also sees vocalist John Henry return to a style more closely approximating his work on early Darkest Hour, albeit a tad harsher and more martial.

These elements of Darkest Hour’s past works float atop an amalgam of their newer, metalcore influenced sound. The elements of classic melodeath that the band always impeccably recreated are set to a backdrop of vicious aggression that provide a new kind of edge to Darkest Hour that one never noticed was missing before. This is perhaps best exemplified by the album’s tenth and possible standout track, “The Last of the Monuments”, which mixes nimble guitar work, infectious melodies and ferocious attitude. “Godless Prophets & the Migrant Flora” truly finds the best of both worlds that Darkest Hour has ventured into, removes them with a scalpel, and then slaps them onto a new musical canvas. The result is twelve tracks that simultaneously capture Darkest Hour at both their most tuneful and their most assailing.   

“Godless Prophets & the Migrant Flora” is available preorder/buy here

Band info: facebook