Death Awaits You, What are You Waiting For?

Loss (USA)

Despond

May 31, 2011

Let us put to rest our silence. There is nothing cosmic about this. No divinity to be found here. No consciousness expansion or mystical secrets to be revealed. Flesh has been cut, blood has been shed, and only pain and deprivation provide company in the presence of absolute loneliness. Surrender is the only path out of this cold and damp black corner. Misery is the saviour dragging the noose around your neck towards the gaping void beyond. Choking desperation provides a tourniquet for the wounds that will never heal. Your vacant shell of a body will know sorrows not meant for the living. Sacrifice yourself, the curtains are falling. End it all before you know fear. If you saw the darkness before death, life fading before its last breath, then you would know. If you saw life without hope, death without reason, then you would know. Once you listen to last year's painfully beautiful catharsis of funeral doom excellence, then you would know...

Seven Psalms for Our Lord of Light

Burning Witch (USA)

Crippled Lucifer

March 28, 1998

Ladies and gentlemen, the legendary Burning Witch. The embryonic minds behind the creations of Khanate, SunnO))), Asva and Goatsnake briefly came together to produce one metric fuck-tonne of a behemoth amongst influential extreme doom/stoner releases. Crippled Lucifer is a collection of rotten sludgy death dirges written around 1996-1997 and released after they broke up, and was significant to the growth of the esteemed Southern Lord Records as it was just starting out. This is a bad acid trip through hell, where the weed is tainted with decay, and the air is thick with the ghastly musk of bloody concrete and urban death. Swampy riffs trudge through graveyard quicksand beneath shrieks of possessed apocalyptic demons. Feedback and chaos strike through the seams of the voids between each passing crush of seismic distortion. A wasteland worth acquiring the taste for, even if only for the historic impact. Pack the bong for this one, and let the crippling begin...

We're in the Shadow of a Dying World

Subrosa (USA)

No Help for the Mighty Ones

March 1, 2011

Music that sounds just as drained of colour as the day outside, like the heavy ceiling of endless grey clouds themselves are a vacuum, a parallel plane of inverted metaphysics, that slowly inhale the particles of hue and saturation, in exchange for gentle offerings of pale flakes of frozen spirits. There's something of almost religious significance to this. It's a gorgeous swell of surreality. Violins provide solace amongst the barren urban decay in the physical caress of winding streams, the softly blowing breeze as it pours forth from the furnace of burning hope, kept alit with the passion of struggling forth when everything starts looking the same. There's a happy ending out there somewhere, you can feel it, you can sense it. Squint amidst the mysticism, and bleed out the bleak because this doom is veiled in secrets and signs. Subrosa released this gem last year, one of the best pieces of musical art to reach my ears in a long time. The concept, the unique sound, the artwork, the whole package really nails it home for me. Bleak post-apocalyptic doom, a fitting theme for the current epidemic of end of the world themed media all of a sudden. The soundtrack to a dying earth. It is 2012 after all, so we shall see. You need to hear this. Stream it below.