In the past their albums had been one ~40 minute experience and a four part ~50 minute trip, ‘Destrudo’ feels a bit more serious and aims for a more readable standard with beautiful cover art and a logo that’d have a black/death vibe if we didn’t know better. They roar, they rasp, the whole thing is much more of a journey than that sounds since this time around the band cut everything into just three distinct pieces. At the same time they’re definitely in debt to techniques we’re all too familiar with these, those shimmering tremolo crescendos you might remember from fucking to Explosions in the Sky albums in the mid-to-late 2000’s, but translated to an early Pallbearer level of gloom. We’ve essentially got a post-metal album in this third full-length from the band but instead of using atmospheric sludge metal as the base riff and rhythmic patternation much of the structural features of ‘Destrudo’ pull from a mixture of modern and traditional doom metal of the slower variety. Love the clarity of the drums, the riffs a gorgeously curvy knots from start to finish, guitar tones could use more change-ups to lend each song a bit more standalone power, and I wanted a cleaner bass tone personally but overall a major flex for these guys and one of the more underrated sludge/doom records of the year.īasel, Switzerland post-doom metal trio Echolot literally put me to sleep in my chair the first time I listened to ‘Destrudo’ and I didn’t consider this a virtue until I’d sat with it a few more times. Very advanced stuff for a debut and I’d found it class as Hell that they’d show up with a serious album to start. We get more of that upfront as ‘Smoking Mountain’ fires up with bit of earlier High on Fire‘s sludged-deep fantasy metal rhythms on “Deathcave”, some hissin’ and doomin’ nigh atmosludge brooding on “Last Breath”, and man you’ve got to hear album closer “Poison Wizard”! They’ve set some new manner of variety around each corner and hey, they pull into those new ideas slow enough that it always feels like Deathcave have an complex but knowable identity in mind. What’d impressed me back then was their nods to the old sway of things while still kinda sporting a mildly proggy 2000’s Relapse sludge vibe nearby.
It sounds like having worked with two consistent local pros, Witch Ape Studio and Audiosiege, provided enough insight to create this huge and just ready to hit it kinda 90’s aggro-sludge influenced stoner/doom metal sound.
DOOM METAL ALBUMS PROFESSIONAL
Some of the finest regional talent we’ve hit upon here in the very well fed Pacific Northwest United States sludge/doom hybridization spectrum, Seattle-based “cosmic doom” trio Deathcave had already made a solid first impression with their way professional 2019 demo tape.