Coat - Swamp (2013)

You love sludge, rough and raw sludge, not half-mainstream one? Me too. And this band, from Minsk, in Belarus, is what I love in sludge. Sure it's no revolutionary, but after listening to a whole bunch of boring new releases, suddenly you feel you got something to lean on with such a band. Don't be misguided by the drawing on the cover sleeve, it's no psyche-stoner but pure (impure is a more appropriate word) sludge with feet deep down in muddy clay. Proud descendants of EyeHateGod, with a more punk (slow punk don't misunderstand me) approach, sometimes like Drunk With Gun (but who remember this band?). And moreover there's something of true despair in it, and less of the dope and alcohol trip of these great ancients. Hope I can help them to find their audience here (but it's doom and stoner community here that brought them to my attention). Go here to listen and buy.

Cough / Windhand - Split EP (2013)

When 2 bands you love share a new issue, it's double pleasure but sometimes bands don't offer their best efforts on such releases. Here tracks are gorgeous and provide the heavy doom load inherited from Electric Wizard that most of us couldn't live long without. But now that the Wizard has lost his inner necessity, Windhand and Cough, both from Richmond, are some among those who still feed this seminal style. And on the year Black Sabbath reunites and the Melvins play their seminal nineties LPs, it's a sign that this music travels through time without any trace of damage when so many are stuck in a narrow historical window. Here, Windhand proposes 2 long tracks with a strong psychedelic fragrance when Cough show that they are the masters of dark loudness and know how to make a 18 min suite sounds like a short piece of eternity. Perfect companions for long lonely and depressives evenings. Go here to listen and buy.

Ornaments - Pneumologics (2013)

I would not have imagined to be able to love this much an atmospheric doom post-rock album but it's the case, and I fuck do love it. Although based on classic chord successions and traditional way to mimic elevation with sound agencements (imagine Pelican), this Italian band revitalizes it and gived me the impression to rediscover it (like these women who, at an advanced age, gives to love a new taste). Of course, there's maybe a Radiohead flavour in the (rare) vocals approach on "Breath" but it's so good that I didn't mind at all, and on the last track, vocals are furious and almost punkish showing the band never is where you would expect. The perfect music to get out of yourself on lone evenings or on the opposite, for introspection. Never boring (the main problem of this style), this band is in activity for apparently a decade now (shame on me to have missed them so long). Here they provide a milestone for amateurs of this style, that should be breathtaking when it seems so often breathless. Not Ornaments who give it some oxygen with this Pneumologic offer. Go here to listen (but strangely not buy any numeric version), there to buy the CD or vinyl.

Dope Deal - EP (2012)

It becomes harder and harder to find anything in the doom/sludge/noise style that raises in me any interest, and even more any shivering thrill in my old spine. So, since this blog is doomed to be rather rarely fuelled, I prefer to wait until something takes the shit out of me. And after days and days, I got one. Their name is Dope Deal (not a sane name I admit but who cares about sanity). They're from Baton Rouge, of course a place where sludge and doom are local specialities. And (EyeHate)God knows how many seminal bands come from this part of the world in this style. Dope Deal can be considered as a credible relief. It's not really sludge, there's a Bastards/Janitor Joe flavor in it (and more largely Amphetamine Reptile band stable). On "Each Day Is A Gift", difficult not to think of the Melvins in their glory times. So it was impossible for me not to fall for them. This is what I call wild music, nothing in common with the riff & roll metal soup that we are served as extreme music when it's boring like an old senile neighbor. So, for those who read these words, don't miss this great band, there are not so many these days. And buy their stuff here. It's as cheap as the music is great. Sad I only discovered it these days since this EP is 6 months old now.