* You may remember last weeks article and how I went on about life and musical goodness. If you read into the part about the river then you'll be pleased to know that said friend was awesome enough to write us up todays article, so without further ado...
Today we're going to dig into the wide and interesting world of doom, drone, and other sludgy miscellanea. Also something a bit closer to the usual here so as not to be a completely out there day. I know sometimes the week seems to drag on, and midweek usually is the worst part, and this is often what I need to revive me, a hearty slab of thick, powerful, distorted groove to get me moving again.
To start off we have Earth, our home planet, and the both genre bending, and genre defining doom/drone band. With old stuff like slowed down Black Sabbath and newer material like the slowest most ominous western, everything they've produced exudes powerful trance inducing sound waves. Their newest album "Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I" is a sure continuance of these waves, and is part one of a double album, the second part to be released sometime in 2012. Its thick and powerful, and feels like you should be driving down a country road, preferably in texas or somewhere with lots of fields, windows down, driving wherever your foot may take you. Music meant to be experienced at high volumes.
Continuing deeper in the depths of the doom realm, we have another spacial band. Sunn O))) named after a guitar amplifier brand and logo. Their audio philosophy is "Maximum volume yields maximum results" and this is quite evident in both their live show and their albums, live they play at upwards of 120 decibels, and as you turn the album up on your stereo it begins to become a full body experience. Like an ambient band Sunn O))) produce soundscapes, but where a lot of ambient music feels looser and floaty and often cloud-like, their soundscapes are much more like being submerged in magma and mashed between slowly shifting tectonic plates of distorted sound. A slow, distorted and incredibly dense sound Sunn O)))'s music sounds a lot like noise at first, but soon you begin to hear (or feel, depending on your stereo) the slow waves of the drone, and little *almost* melodies hidden in the chords and feedback. The newest album Monoliths & Dimensions is a masterpiece of these concepts and philosophies.
Lastly, a fantastic post rock band I just found out about this past week called Sleepmakeswaves. I listened to their newest album "...and so we destroyed everything" on a long drive this weekend down to lake erie. The album is split between longer more post rock tracks with lots of building and massive crescendos, and shorter electronic-esque ballads. Between staple post rock moments with tremolo picking and delayed guitars there is some fantastic d&b drumming and beats snuck into these tracks that really give it an interesting feel. There is also some nearly metal riffs snuck in here, its a really diverse album, but it still manages to feel like one cohesive package. Give it a chance and listen to it the whole way through. My drive blew past and I was left wanting more, and listened again on the way home, time flies by when your having fun...
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