Rising
To Solemn Ash
Exile On Mainstream

Yes, Rising’s To Solemn Ash was released last year overseas, but since this here is its North American release, I don’t feel tardy in telling you all about its sludgy goodness, dig? Following a four-song EP in 2009 and a 7″ single in 2010, To Solemn Ash finds the Danish trio finally putting a massive effort into a full-length, and oh what a monumental design it be. As though guardians of some Copenhagen castle, gargoyles perched high in the blackest of skies, Rising preside over the kingdom of heavy with a stony, melodic glare. The swirling storm that is To Solemn Ash swells with opener “Mausoleum,” its dark, corpse-painted intro-riffing eerily akin to Behemoth’s “Ov Fire and the Void,” but as the album thunders on, it comes to pass that Rising were not born of the extreme black, but that they are, in fact, doomed descendants of the Baroness bloodline. So they carry themselves accordingly throughout, beset by beasts both basilisk and sharp-toothed hound, themselves grotesque creatures commanding a thick rush of temper-metal weather and spreading brutally fancy dread.

Listen to “Through The Eyes of Catalysis” from To Solemn Ash!

Black Tusk
Set the Dial
Relapse

Set the Dial is the fourth full length from Savannah metal heads Black Tusk, and if you’ve had the pleasure of hearing either of their latter two, Passage Through Purgatory or Taste the Sin, you know exactly the kind of sludge covered punk you’re about to receive (John Dyer Baizley artwork and all). You see, like its predecessors, Set the Dial rumbles its way through murky swamp and crusty gutter to get to where you feel most safe and comfortable only to heap a hell of a lot of petulance and abrasive screams onto you. That being said though, as crumbling, noise-driven attacks, Black Tusk’s earlier efforts thrived on destruction, where Set the Dial‘s objective seems to be one aimed at rebuilding, at harnessing the rust-stained chaos in order to rise to loftier heights. They do this through the coy use of groove, which lays in wait on table-setter “Brewing the Storm” and then busts through the muck and mire to take over songs like “Mass Devotion,” “Set the Dial to Your Doom,” “Resistor,” and “This Time is Divine,” making Set the Dial‘s riff-driven focus the main, albeit subtle, point of difference. At the end of the day though, it’s another grease-charged album of Georgian origin, and one could spend an entire month getting filthy, high, and in trouble listening to Black Tusk and their mates of state, Zoroaster, Kylesa, Mastodon, and Baroness.

Listen to “Set The Dial To Your Doom” from Set the Dial!

Helms Alee
Weatherhead
Hydra Head

Bands like Baroness, Harvey Milk, Big Business and Torche (and Floor before them) are probably the ones you immediately think of when someone mentions the term ‘melodic sludge.’ But another band, often found on the same bill in smaller letters, that deserves every bit the attention thanks to their 2008 debut full-length, Night Terror, is Helms Alee. But it’s been three years since we’ve heard from Helms Alee, who’ve kept a much lower profile than their contemporaries, which means it falls on the shoulders of their sophomore release, Weatherhead, to legitimize the band’s sound as a forceful one and further expose the Seattle trio for the capital letter weird metal titans they really are. What Weatherhead does is succeed at extrapolating and exploring territories far beyond the melodic sludge they reveled in on Night Terror, and we hear them drawing dirty, noisy, no wave, late 80s to early 90s influences from the likes of the Melvins and Sonic Youth. Weatherhead, then, is awash in slower, pastoral moments (“Music Box,” “Mad Mouth,” and “Epic Adventure Through the Woods (Sucker Punch)”) and instances of over-the-top scuzzy pop (“8/16,” “Revel!,” and “Born in Fiberglass”), but it’s still held together by the usual torrent of core-shaking heaviness and male/female vocal harmonies in which the band specializes. Night Terror junkies should find familiar friends in “Pretty As Pie” and “Speed Sk8r,” but it’s the wide-reaching, muscle and brains dichotomy that makes this album such a wonderfully strange bedfellow.

Listen to “Pretty As Pie” from Weatherhead!