Behold! The Monolith
Defender, Redeemist
BTM Records

As proven before, Behold! The Monolith’s stoner sludge is for subhumans only, and it is on Defender, Redeemist, their second full-length, that the LA trio delve further into the subterranean, digging out their descent with sledgehammers, not shovels. Defender, Redeemist is rife with ground and pound riffs, and tracks like “Halv King,” “Desolizator,” “We Are the Worm,” and “Witch Hunt Supreme” are a glorious feast of mud pies and smegma cakes, each one belching out High On Fire fury amidst tremulous and atmospheric aggression. However, it’s on the album’s three longest songs, “Redeemist,” “Cast On The Black/Lamentor/Guided By The Southern Cross,” and “Bull Colossi,” that the band is at its most heinous, laying down an ageless, soul-sucking black metal doom that ebbs, flows, and screams in myriad glorious ways. Add to that Billy Anderson’s production work and Dusty Peterson’s art work (which kind of reminds me of a re-imagined Screaming for Vengeance), and Defender, Redeemist is one hell of a monster on so many different levels.

Listen to “Halv King” from Defender, Redeemist!

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!

Elder
Dead Roots Stirring
MeteorCity Records

Elder tap that critical vein, the one where the blood runs slow and thick, and they must know how good their stuff tastes, how addictive it really is, because like any pusher worth their salt, they hook us five songs at a time every two to three years. Thank Satan’s graces that those five songs hold enough crushing doom to keep us down and out until the next batch roll around. ‘Twas the way with their self-titled debut and just when you thought they’d been pinched and were gone forever, lost to the land of the tattooed sodomites, they show up like a greasy cousin to ruin your life once more. And with news that Black Pyramid has crumbled, now is the perfect time for Elder to indoctrinate the proud and confused with their spaced-out Sleep worship. On Dead Roots Stirring, the Massachusetts trio take the fuzz-punch of their debut and trick it out with a heavy dose of harmonics and melodic riffs, creating a more energized psych-doom that treads other genre waters as well, like stoner rock and post-rock. The end result is 52 minutes of boundary-baiting boldness; part Wizard, part Sasquatch, part Jupiter, all Awesome.

Listen to “The End” from Dead Roots Stirring!