Here’s a collection of albums that I’ve acquired recently since my last album post. Almost all are from eMusic, although I did have to order one or two of some of the more obscure ones. Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot more Sludge Doom. This is what I’m liking right now:

At thirty-eight minutes and just three tracks that are basically unnamed, Buried At Sea’s “Migration” is a massive, crushing Sludge Doom album that deserves many, many replays. I had to order it through the mail, which I totally hate doing, but it was well worth it. I love this shit. There needs to be more of it. I would kill to see this band live. I hear that after a retarded amount of years, a new album is finally coming out this October. If true, I will, I must find it and buy it. There can be no other way.

Halo is an Australian duo with a Sludge/Industrial Doom thing going on. “Guattari (From The West Flows Grey Ash And Pestilence)” is some serious skull-fucking shit. Gigantic bass thumping, distortion and noise. Loud and charged. It’s a really good album. Great listening for when you’re totally shit-faced in the middle of the night and about to fall on some subway tracks and end up a smeared mess of multi-colored goo. In other words, you should make sure you have it loaded on your MP3 player because you never know when you might end up as track lubricant. As I’ve been writing this post, I downloaded another album of theirs and a couple tracks in, I’m really liking it.

“Documents Of Grief” is a self-released album by the Sludge Doom band, Graves At Sea (Don’t ask me what the deal is with nautical-themed band names in Doom Metal, I don’t know). With slow, Stoner riffs, super-heavy bass lines and vocals that are reminiscent of Black Metal, I find these dudes often occupying a spot on my playlists. I like ‘em. I dig ‘em. I carry them on my MP3 player and I listen to them often.

Since I’m still loving eMusic and have been racking new albums every month, I thought I’d list some of the better to best shit I’ve accrued lately.

Electric Wizard is by far one the dopest, heaviest bands around. Their Ozzy-era Black Sabbath-inspired, Stoner/Sludge Doom Metal style is straight-up 70’s era evil psychedelia. It’s loud, chunking and very slow. I have all of their albums and my latest addition, “Come My Fanatics“, is by far their best work and definitely one of the best albums I’ve ever owned in my life. It’s low, slow, evil-hippy vibe makes me want to start wearing denim jackets, grow a fu-manchu, contact Satan and start living out a van (complete with air-brushing). I highly recommend this album.

Boris is a Japanese experimental band who are difficult to place in a genre. Though I only have one of their albums, I’ve read they bounce all over the place with different styles of noise/music. “Absolutego” is one 65-minute long track of ambient noise/Drone Doom filled will slowly plodding bass, buzzing guitars, lotsa feedback and heavy usage of the e-bow. There’s no riffs, melodies or anything. Just ambient guitar noise for over an hour and it’s great. Truly creepy, bad acid trip shit. This is a soundtrack to accompany corpses crawling out of graves. I’m definitely going to check out their other albums.

Similar in style and direction is the band Sunn 0)) (pronounced “Sun” and named after the amplifiers they use). Extremely slow and heavy, using droning, heavily-distorted guitars and sound effects to create a dark, malevolent soundscape, Sunn 0)) are prime examples of Drone Doom. The album “Flight of the Behemoth” is five really long tracks of ambient doom, despair and inscrutable evil. I love these guys. To top it all off, the duo that makes up this band wear evil monk robes whenever they perform live! Could it be cooler?

In fact, I love them so much, I bought another one of their albums, called “The Grimm Robe Demos“. It’s exactly the same kind of shit, which is perfect. Evil, weird, down-tuned and long. Lacking any discernible form or structure, it is music for alien landscapes. That said it’s not for everyone. If you’re not into evil, ambient noise then this music is either going to scare you or give you a headache (or quite possibly both), but if you dig the heavy, creepy shit, you’ll love Sunn 0))) and these two albums.