Always Upon You, Light Never Ceases

Isis (USA)

Panopticon

October 19, 2004

The electric eye is all-seeing. No matter what you do, an electronic trail is left behind. Someone, somewhere is keeping tabs. Watching. Cold, distant and clinical voyeurism. Panopticon is the zenith of post metal. After tribal space sludge (Celestial) gained new life through a crash landing in the seas of the bermuda triangle (Oceanic), the invasion takes form as a transparent entity of modern artificial sourveillance and control over societal behaviour, conforming the path of mankind. However, the human touch is all but forgotten, as there is delicacy to be found here, a gentle touch that can only come from warm blood, as showcased particularly on the provocative crowning achievement of "So Did We" and the heartfelt transformative power of the instrumental "Altered Course." Distortion comes encrusted with a binary residue, a film of luminescence that is all seeing, and yet unseen. We cannot hide ourselves. Our souls rain down at the foot of authoritarian towers. Eyes unseen, they may be watching, perched upon grinning mouths and cancerous tongues. Resist. Listen. Read more.

Everything is Falling, Can You See It?

Altar of Plagues (Ireland)

White Tomb

April 17, 2009

One day, when everything collapses into chaos, Ireland's Altar of Plagues' sound will be known to all, as the embodiment of urban decay and complete deterioration of contemporary civilization. It will be felt beforehand, as a swelling shockwave in time of the disaster yet to come, but will strike with sudden urgency and overwhelming distress. Awareness comes slow, if at all. Regression to roots and bark will be a painful bloodletting of the land, but from the wounds will come grain again. The destruction of everything we know, the lands and seas opening great cracks in the earth where mankind gathers upon the cliffs under black clouds of ash and cast themselves to the abyss, reigns down until only silence and desolation remains. The mist chokes the land as the forces behind the waves, the forces from the skies, continue their relentless attack, a replenishment of primal wisdom, a truth to be grown out of the ruins. The atmosphere of this is bleak, and dense as concrete, but organic growth provides a warm pulse of inevitable cyclical cleansing. This plague is a purging. Realize our descent. Listen to this album below. Hugely influential and inspiring grimy blackened sludge post-doom apocalypse.

Start Saving for Your Funeral

Coffinworm (USA)

When All Became None

April 5, 2010

Horror descends and madness takes control. Crusty doom sludge monster lurching through the sewers under the grey rainy city streets. Disease and stumbling disorientation overtakes with the odour of malicious intent. Occasional flashbacks of 'shroom-induced paranoia pump up the blood pressure, while a sonic freight train chugs through the skull. Psychosis takes reign over nihilistic attitude, channelling the fantasies of serial killers and other perverted scum of the earth. Becoming the lurching shit thumping urban monster of death and doom. The apocalypse will be brought with oceans of blood and terror. The cancer breeding forth from hearts of the cities becomes an epidemic. The sickening crushingly dense buildups of corpse intoxication continue to exchange with destructive stomping mosh fits of murder and cannibalism, spreading the plague further towards the death of all. This came out a couple years ago. Great band. Get high on the stench of this decay, and kill some zombies or something. Read more for the stream.

Star, Reign Down on You

Neurosis (USA)

Through Silver in Blood

April 2, 1996

Seeking shelter from the storm. Heart racing, the grinding of industrialized machinery crippling forth destruction of urban realities. Atmospheric forces of alien origin invade the senses, a chilling caress made manifest in a serpentine breeze, pulsating with shockwaves of malignant electrical energy, steals the breath right out of the lungs. Concrete collapsing all around, colours disintegrating with the hopes of survival. Flesh slowly decays and the veins of the soul begin to leak streams of translucent matter, surging forth from the oil fed furnace of iron pumping hearts to the open abyss of the sea of spirituality that is blanketing the world in unified breakdown, global decay and regression towards the one true centre. A return to the soil, a return to stone. Doom encrusted within a tribal trance, ebbing and flowing amongst primordial truths and instincts long since systematically eradicated from human consciousness. The sun pierces the sky, scarring the black with the luminescence of stars. A death of the self, a death of the ego. Rebirth of enlightenment. Listen to Neurosis' finest hour below. Not for the weak.

It was All Very Sudden

Rituals (USA)

Rituals

March 20, 2012

Everything about this package had me drawn towards it. From the smoky ambience of the artwork's abstract depth of the flesh of ghosts, the ambiguously occult name of Rituals, right down to the effectively post-blackened font, I knew I was going to enjoy this. I could describe the music as down tempo atmospheric apocalyptic post-doom with soaring ethereal leads ala Year of No Light or even Godspeed You! Black Emperor in the cinematic scope of the arrangements, using textbook examples of post-rock dynamics, of buildups and release. The subterranean, ritualistic rhythms pounded out by drums and bass from the depths of the underworld create the firmament unto which the dying rays of a burnt out sun gleam with decrepit radiance in the form of cerebral tremolo auroras. The music really fits the vast and barren land from which it comes. Listen to this as you doze off to sleep, or have it provide a background accompaniment to some artistic endeavor, and good things will come. Read more to listen.