Old Horn Tooth - Mourning Light (London Doom Collective)
I’d been waiting to hear more of Old Horn Tooth since seeing them at in Masters Of The Riff in 2023. Their Neolithic doom metal is skull crushing live, so I went back and picked up their 2019 album From The Ghost Grey Depths and was impressed by the elongated, ritualistic slabs of marathon fuzz, stomping with the deliberateness of a prehistoric beast or a kaiju on ketamine.As the curators of the London Doom Collective (organisers of Masters Of The Riff) they know their onions when it comes to how doom should be. So it was with glee that I pressed play on Mourning Light (get it?) their follow up to the 2019 record. Deciding to put their expertise to good use, it’s released under the London Doom Collective name, giving Old Horn Tooth all the freedom a band would need while also letting them keep the D.I.Y ethos this highly experienced band have always had.
From the outset of Precipice you can hear why they have been compared to bands such as Monolord, Electric Wizard and Conan, fielding an ungodly heaviness that is driven by fuzzy, distorted guitar hypnosis, the riffs repeating again and again just slithering in between your ears to make your head nod and not stop until the end of closing number Invisible Agony, a track which adds some beautiful cello in conjunction with the 21 minute, melancholic journey, that gets fuzzier towards its climax as Chris Jones anguished, mournful vocals carve their way through the dissonance, although due to the track lengths, they aren’t used that often but when they do come in I get the same shiver I do from a band such as Warning.
Jones also provides the guitar, locked in to the massive ungainly grooves with bassist Ollie Issac, beginning with those low and slow thumps on Precipice, Mark Davidson’s intuitive drumming not only keeping the pace but putting in fills that stop any thoughts of it being one dimensional. This is always a risk with doom bands, playing a song that goes on for so long and has lots of sections where repetition is key, it’s the way it’s played, the little fills the atmospheric drops into sparseness, the brighter ambient moments, and the drives back into all-consuming weight that keeps you interested as 10, 15, 20 minutes go by.
No Salvation takes those movements into more ethereal realms, peeling back the distortion but still managing to be grief stricken and affecting, with a simple few chords, the occasional bass pluck and lots of emptiness as the drum kicks in and we build again, some harsher screams coming on the tail end. It’s these glimpse of vulnerability and fragility that separates Old Horn Tooth from the crushing, non-stop riffs of a band such as Conan or even Electric Wizard, it’s less legalise drugs and murder, more normalize hugs and mourning. Pulverising, forlorn doom that looks for hope with every strike of a chord or a drum skin. A magnificent new standard bearer for doom. 10/10
Hail Spirit Noir - Fossil Gardens (Agonia Records)
After their foray with synthwave on their previous album, 2021's Mannequins, Thessaloniki based avant gardists Hail Spirit Noir return to their metallic roots with sixth album Fossil Gardens. With Dimitris Dimitrakopoulos providing the emotive cleans there's similarities to band such as Madrugada, Soen and Katatonia vocally before the black metal blasts beckon in what is their most extreme metal album to date. Thematically it follows on from their 2020 album Eden In Reverse, trying to unveil the secrets of the universe with multi-faceted, expansive compositions which features progressive black metal riffs, unrelenting drums and ominous atmosphere's from the extensive use of vintage synths.
The lessons they learned from the synthwave experiment are used to bring an extra-terrestrial sound to tracks such as Curse You, Entropia and The Blue Dot where against the harsh extreme metal dissonance and tremolo picking there's electronic elements that twitch in the background behind the atmospheric black metal on The Blue Dot especially. The production lends itself to this idea of being in another world. It's definitely an album to listen to with headphones in order to get the full experience. The Road To Awe slows down to showcase the low clean vocals as they dabble in cathartic blackgaze.
Fossil Garden is an album that will be seen as a return to the style that they are associated with, after their trip to the 80's. Evocative soundscapes and blistering extremity, Hail Spirit Noir uncover brilliance on this new record. 9/10
Ogives Big Band - Boisterous Love (Stolen Body Records)
On their debut album Bristol noisemakers are certainly boisterous and you will love it if bands who bring sludge, psych, doom and much much more to their sound. I've reviewed them here before and I was very impressed so when I saw the debut full length was looming I jumped right on it. Starting out as ambient/noise project Øgïvęš, AKA guitarist Ben Harris.
In 2018 Ben was joined by drummer Oli Cocup and bassist Ben Holyoake, they became a Big Band shifting the focus towards angular, riff heavy prog metal which is drawn from Neurosis, Mastodon, Amenra and Yob, but with a some stop start math metal weirdness on Brandishment, jazz rhythms and psychedelic wanderings. As the Big Band they became much more potent musically, the trio exploring wider musical textures though never forgetting the ambient/drone beginnings on the desolate Annihilation.
In 2020 they added Steve Robert's hardcore honed screams and the Big Band was now complete, the rhythm section has been replaced wholesale with Corey Carruthers Bell on bass and John Stewart on drums making this album a brand new chapter in the constant evolution of Ogives Big Band. With the intelligent lyrics on Absolute Unit are all have a hidden meaning, you have to read between the lines as the song takes you through nearly 9 minutes of jazz, prog and sludge doom.
The chugging doom sludge of Super Sanity kicks off the 31 minutes of loudness, exhibiting Ogives Big Band at their most aggressive alongside the beginning of Chronic Thuggery. With just these tracks you may think they're just another brash sludge band but it's on the final part of the album they show what they can do, concocting all kinds of explorative escapades that will have any fans of music that comes from the fringes. 8/10
Manumit - Reditus (Lost Generation Records)
From the fertile rock/metal landscape that is Bridgend, South Wales, Manumit are not quite metalcore or classic rock, no what is basically a solo project of Drew Hamley (bassist/clean vocalist of IFightBears) takes music to a more collaborative space infusing modern metal riffs and breakdowns with electronic beats.
Originally conceived in 2014 there was buzz surrounding Manumit, a multimedia based approach saw the music accompanied by slick videos all with conceptual, futuristic visuals. It was picked up by Scuzz TV (remember them?) and Metal Hammer but priorities changed and Manumit was thrown forward in time to revisit again.
Quantum Leap to 2024 and with IFightBears hiding in the woods it's time for Manumit to teleport back into the public consciousness with a new EP called Reditus. This time Hamley has put together a live band, made up of some well known names in the scene but working under nom de plumes and will be taking the project on the road, so Reditus has a bigger more rounded sound.
Co-produced by Hamley and Michael Padget of BFMV there's a strong link to that band on Monsters, favouring straightforward metalcore riffs, dual harsh/clean vocals an minimal electronics. The use of the electronics varies from track to track meaning that much of Reditus is similar to bands such as BMTH, Architects, Bad Omens, FFAF and BFMV too.
Manumit wear their locality and musical heritage proudly, infusing emotional metal music with electronic enhancement. 8/10
From the fertile rock/metal landscape that is Bridgend, South Wales, Manumit are not quite metalcore or classic rock, no what is basically a solo project of Drew Hamley (bassist/clean vocalist of IFightBears) takes music to a more collaborative space infusing modern metal riffs and breakdowns with electronic beats.
Originally conceived in 2014 there was buzz surrounding Manumit, a multimedia based approach saw the music accompanied by slick videos all with conceptual, futuristic visuals. It was picked up by Scuzz TV (remember them?) and Metal Hammer but priorities changed and Manumit was thrown forward in time to revisit again.
Quantum Leap to 2024 and with IFightBears hiding in the woods it's time for Manumit to teleport back into the public consciousness with a new EP called Reditus. This time Hamley has put together a live band, made up of some well known names in the scene but working under nom de plumes and will be taking the project on the road, so Reditus has a bigger more rounded sound.
Co-produced by Hamley and Michael Padget of BFMV there's a strong link to that band on Monsters, favouring straightforward metalcore riffs, dual harsh/clean vocals an minimal electronics. The use of the electronics varies from track to track meaning that much of Reditus is similar to bands such as BMTH, Architects, Bad Omens, FFAF and BFMV too.
Manumit wear their locality and musical heritage proudly, infusing emotional metal music with electronic enhancement. 8/10
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