Obligations

2024: great year for releases. terrible year in general.

Not quite sure if anything in 2024 kicked my ass as soundly as the 2023 unholy triumvirate of Sprain, Great Falls and She The Throne… but, there have been full length clock cleaners for certain: Ploughshare, WUSA, Leprous Vortex Sun, Verberis, a legion of Transcending Obscurity titles, Boru, Black Curse, Ingurgitating Oblivion, Pyrrhon, Gigan, Mitochondrian, Walk Through Fire, Machiavellian Art, Machukha, Choshech, Sutcliffe No More, a bittersweet farewell from Planes Mistaken As Stars, amongst a horde of others. As Corrosion of Conformity would intone in 1985, I’m at “A Loss for Words.” And, the past year I became bored with this platform. As substack tries to become something I’m not into I didn’t do a monthly breakdown of what I was purchasing and listening to in 2024. Add to the fact I’m too lazy to go through what I already wrote about or look at the multitude of bandcamp purchases I made for the year. As far as this failed experiment, another migration to come? Time will tell. Or won’t.

Rip roaring dischordant start to 2025:

Was kind enough to receive promo material from Armand at Breathe Plastic where “Only Tape is Reel.” We shall take a spin. First off the block is something I already picked up in October 2024, the most recent release from Canadian sludgesters The Weir. Two songs this time around. Dual guitar, triple vocal, a Walk Through Fire with reckless Abandon between Winter and Thergothon by way of Virulence and Neurosis. Dreary, bleak quasi melodic Ginn guitar runs threading between the slack string din, glacial plod and caveman growls. Quality drudge.

Orme is the next on the January 2025 Breathe Plastic docket. This is a UK trio plying its trade in doom drone. No Serpents, No Saviours melds guitar tones resplendent in If This Isn’t a Dream Virulence and Bullhead Melvins grandeur. Vocal attack is decidedly more deathly. Bigger push to the drums than what you would think coming from the land of the first British saint and Christian martyr, and no, I’m not speaking of Carl McCoy of Fields of the Nephilim, though I could be. On this recording Orme is rhythmically towing the line of early Melvins in terms of pace without the oddball timing of the gluey porch treatments through lysol years lending huge, head nodding pounding with devilish glances toward the Masque of the Red Death.

I have heard new Chaos Inception Vengeance Evangel care of Jan at Lavadome. Should be out early in 2025 and it continues their brand of hostile Angelcorpse, Krisiun, Morbid Angel, Brodequin terror tactics with an exceptionally raw, lively recording that is somewhere between Covenant and Obscura. Musically it’s a veritable unrelenting charge over 11 tracks in the span of 40 minutes. Dual guitar swarming riffage with distinct left and right mix, dive bombing/whammy bar abuse momentary respite/contrasts with brief melodic solos, blasting drums, rumbling bass, natural guttural vocals. The off chance they slow down, as in “La Niebla…” it’s veering on unsteady Autopsy meets Immolation off-kilter territory.

Also brought to my attention - “part time punks” full time no wave noise of Polite. Genuinely sounds as if this were an unearthed recording circa scuzzy early 80s. No Trend, Flipper, Mecht Mensch, Kilslug damage.

Bringing things down to a more calm baseline with everyone’s favorite spookygirl, Shedfromthebody bringing her Cranes meets Jesu and deftones doomgaze delights.

Farewell for now. please support: Everything Went Black, The Metal Dad and his fiendish five podcast, No Clean Singing, Stereogum: The Black Market, The Devil’s Mouth, Aversionline, Invisible Oranges, Horror Wolf 666, Into the Necrosphere, Sol Nox Podcast, The Book of Very Very Bad Things, Plague Rages, Thrown to the Abyss Podcast, Freedom Has No Bounds, Machine Music, Dreams of Consciousness, Doktor Dismemberment’s Midnight Murderplex and Crucial Blast’s Warhead…. most of these sites update more frequently than what I provide here.