 Welcome back, weary traveler! Firstly, if ye missed Part 1 of this mid-year extravaganza, we highly recommend checking that out first. If you're already familiar with what this is all about, however: thanks so much for reading and returning for more! As always, we appreciate your patronage and your support, particularly now that our humble halls are filled with an exciting array of guest writers who deserve to have their words read.
Again, this collaborative list is far from exhaustive, and represents but a fraction of our collective favorites. As such, please feel free to leave a comment with a recommendation or two! List season is a great time to show the musicians that we love a little well-deserved support, and if you wanna shout someone out, this is as good a time as any. In that spirit, I'd like to once again offer thanks to everyone who helped make this list a reality and a success. Without further ado, let's dive in! Today's list is a tad longer than the first, so pull up a chair, put up yer feet, and stay a while.
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Written by: The Administrator
My favorite albums of the year are, more often than not, those that sneak their way into rotation...and then simply never leave. The ability to maintain interest over months and months of listening is a surefire mark of a good album, and Asundre, the excellent debut from London's Vulgaris, has managed to qualify itself pretty damn handily. This thing came out towards the end of February, and it is a rare thing indeed to locate a week since wherein it hasn't reared its multifaceted heads. At this rate, Asundre certainly stands as one of my most-listened albums o' the year thusfar, which, in turn, probably means I should actually find a soapbox and start appropriately proselytizing. Hence: Every Friday, a wagon arrives at the Sleeping Village’s crumbling gates, stuffed to the brim with our sustenance for the following week. Today is the day we must offload all this week's new and noteworthy music, and so, in the process, we thought it would be worthwhile to share some of our choice picks from this veritable mass of fresh meat. This is what we’ll be--and have been--listening to this week at the Village HQ. We hope you join us in doing so! We slumbering scribes were slightly more productive this week than normal, so enjoy an additional two mini-reviews! On the docket for today, April 30th, 2021: GOREGÄNG, Greyhound, Becerus, Bevar Sea, Order of the Wolf / Pessimista, and Alpha Boötis
Written by: The Administrator
One of my greatest regrets as a reviewer is dropping the ball on a writeup of Dead Register's stellar Captive EP, back in the primordial days of the Sleeping Village's so-called tenure. There's really no excuse for not finishing said review, particularly given how struck I was with their potent blend of highly emotive post-rock/doom. Thus: after spending a long while digesting Dead Register's latest EP, I knew it was time to (finally) talk about why you should be listening to 'em. This EP is a bit of a conglomerate of material, featuring a (killer!) new track, some live versions of previously released material, and a remix of the title track provided by industrial/doom metal duo Lament Cityscape. There's five track contained herein, and the variety on display makes for an intrinsically odd albeit very enjoyable release. Don't Fail Me ultimately serves as a quality amuse-bouche in advance of Dead Register's forthcoming full length. 
Written by: Beaston Lane
In a far-flung epoch where humanity as we know it is but a memory, glamorous towers pierce the heavens, and elite societies vie for supremacy. Everything is greater than the sum of its parts. Etemen Ænka finds itself exploring this simultaneously utopian and dystopian future, dissecting the suffering that underlies greatness. Dvne, named in reference to Frank Herbert’s legendary works of science fiction, draws inspiration from the best sci-fi and dystopias of our time, constructing their own grandiose narrative to the tune of epic psychedelic post-metal. With a musical approach as striking and expansive as their lyrical concepts, Dvne’s debut on Metal Blade is a tremendous step forward for the band, laying the foundations for what will hopefully be a storied career. On (most!) Fridays, a wagon arrives at the Sleeping Village’s rusted palisade, stuffed to the brim with musical sustenance. Today is the day we must offload this week's new and noteworthy music, and so, in the process, we thought it would be worthwhile to share some of our choice picks from this veritable mass of fresh meat. This is what we’ll be listening to today at the Village HQ. We hope you join us in doing so! It isn't bandcamp Friday, but... ...that doesn't mean it isn't a great day to support musicians! On the docket for today, March 26th, 2021: Breaths, Celestial Sanctuary, Dope Skum, and Seven Serpents
Special thanks to Carcassbomb (of ye olde Noob Heavy and Black Lodge PR) for the words! If you're looking for top-notch music writing, I highly recommend adding Noob Heavy to your blog rotation. You should also check out Black Lodge PR if you need, well, PR (the sheer quality of which I'll happily vouch for!) - Ed.
Guest post written by: Carcassbomb
Australia has been coming in strong lately with bands under the genre tag “dark metal,” which is well suited here with a sound that is difficult to nail down, it takes a bit of everything with the emphasis on darkness. Be that a brooding kind of darkness or menacing darkness depends on the album, but with Spire there’s a perfect balance of both. This is my introduction to the band and it left quite the impression! A pleasurable barrage of doomy genre-hopping can be found on Temple of Khronos. They have a powerful way of building up to really epic moments that come with a lot of added flourish. There’s a great black metal influence with shrieking that reminds me of Silencer as well as growls on the doom end of the death spectrum--both of which blend in well with the clean variations of singing and BIG HUMMMMS. There’s a lot of thickness to the overall production, utilizing vocal modulation and repetition to great effect. The density could be compared to fellow Australian’s Portal or more recent, The Amenta, and the BIG HUMMMMS might sound freshly familiar to those who dug into that Sutrah EP last year. 
Written by: The Administrator
In lieu of the typical rambling introduction, I'll spare you all and jump straight to my conclusions regarding Nostophobia, the debut full length from Portland's Sea Sleeper. In sum, then: this is a wonderfully chaotic album filled to the brim with the kind of untethered energy that practically demands listener engagement. However, it is also a confusingly chaotic album that would benefit significantly from some spit and polish. Sea Sleeper bill themselves as a bit of a genre-jumping anomaly, frequently folding in elements of post-metal, deathcore, sludge, avant-garde, metallic hardcore, and even a lil' angsty grunge into their bubbling cauldron o' progressive death. Needless to say, this is a complex conglomerate of sights 'n' sounds, and makes for an experience that is borderline confounding across the breadth. As a fan of boundary-pushing and rule-breaking in music as a general rule, that quality is a clarion call of sorts--provided the intrinsic weirdness sticks the landing. 
Written by: The Administrator
Given the current state of, well, everything, I've been taking a lot of walks lately. In a world that is seemingly stripping away means of comfort at an increasingly alarming rate, the prospect of fresh air, a little light exercise, and the ability to just leave the stress behind is something to which this particular scribe has clung as the weather becomes more foreboding. A good walk, however, demands a good soundtrack, and while the pure aggression of OSDM or thrash or black metal may do for the confines of our drafty scriptorium, the walk demands something a little more...meditative. Enter the appropriately entitled "Haunting Mantra," the latest doomgaze-y single from solo guitarist and composer FUZZNAUT. I have been meaning to write a review for this thing since first listen, but better late than never, amiright? 
Written by: Izzy
So normally, I like to give a little background in the intro paragraph of my reviews about the band I’m reviewing--some of their history, or how I came to discover the album. But in the case of May Our Chambers Be Full, Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou's recent cooperative album, neither artist is one I’m particularly familiar with, despite their long and storied careers. Thou are a band by which I’ve briefly listened to a couple albums and previous splits; they’re a very traditional sounding sludge metal band and I was never crazy about them. Not a bad band, but certainly not one that ever amazed me. Emma Ruth Rundle, on the other hand, I knew nothing about previously. After some quick googling I found that she’s made a handful of solo albums to decent acclaim, her style towing the line between singer-songwriter, dream pop, folk, and shoegaze, but has also been a member in post-rock and atmo-sludge bands. She also notably helps run the record label Sargent House, a rather eclectic group of diverse and beloved artists, most notably featuring Chelsea Wolfe and Kristin Hayter (A.K.A. Lingua Ignota.) |
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We provide thoughtful reviews of music that is heavy, gloomy...and loud enough to wake us from slumber. Written by a highfalutin peasantry!
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