Written by: The Administrator
Greetings, dear readers, and welcome back to yet another premiere! We're stepping it up today with a full album, courtesy of Baltimore's Born of Plagues. The mighty Dead Endings is their sophomore release, and if you're on the hunt for something as crushingly gloomy as it is crushingly heavy, I suspect you'll find this one quite worth your while. Born of Plagues play an intriguing brand of death-doom that feels as funereal and moody as it is brawny and sludgy. I'm immediately drawn to anything that seeks to combine the tenets of death and doom; like many of the great duos of history, the genre conglomerate succeeds because it is greater than the sum of its component parts. I'm obviously a massive fan of both on their own, but when the sheer aggression of death metal meets the morose melancholy of doom, something borderline magical is liable to occur. By virtue of comparison, the doomy elements seem doomier, and the deathy moments seem, y'know. Deathier? On Dead Endings, the doom elements do feel more overtly prominent across the breadth, but the death-adjacent inclusions serve well to elevate the project. There's a notable sense of dynamics at play, and the juxtaposition of a stygian gloom with well-placed bloody-knuckled pugilism helps maintain interest and intrigue. A good death-doom project will often demonstrate a strong sense of push and pull, ebb and flow, give and take. Dead Endings fulfills this quality quite handily. Prior to its official release tomorrow, November 21st, we're pleased to present Dead Endings in its entirety. Check it out below! Do it quickly, lest I bore you with more pontification on the many merits of death and doom's unholy union. As always, we'll meet again on the far side!
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 Written by: The Administrator We slumbering scribes were out of the premiere game for a minute there. But alas! Good Boy PR has revived us from our beauty sleep with a series of slumber-shattering projects that deserve the ol' premiere treatment. The genre-stew cacophony of Old Deer was the jumpstart we needed, evidently; this week will see not one but two premieres, the first of which comes from Slôdder, Sweden's own self-reported "rabid and misanthropic" slingers of sludge. Today's track/music video in question, "Brat Salad," serves as the third single for Slôdder's forthcoming album Narcissist, which drops November 26th. It's the followup to 2023's “A Mind Designed To Destroy Beautiful Things,” and I can comfortably say that it is inordinately heavy. Indeed, a brief scan of the FFO's indicates that Slôdder represents music that is profoundly hefty, loud, and uncompromising. EyeHateGod, Iron Monkey, Fistula, Weedeater, Brainoil, Anti Cimex, and Discharge are all referenced. I hardly need to tell you that this lineup--and I mean this in the most complimentary sense--makes for a migraine-inducing roster. Slôdder likewise exudes heaviness. At this point in their career, they are no strangers to music that crushes and bludgeons with a grim and dissatisfied determination. Getting to the point: "Brat Salad" makes a strong argument for their commitment to the craft. We are honored to premiere the track and video here today. Give it a listen (and a watch!) below. As always, we'll meet you on the other side! "Brat Salad" is perhaps best enjoyed with the volume set somewhere between "dull roar" and "skull-splitting." There's a true physicality baked into the music, with Slôdder's low end indulging in a beastly tone that feels like it could cause genuine and long-lasting bodily harm if encountered in a live setting. This is ribcage-splintering, lung-crushing, artery-bursting stuff. For all its implicit groove, the bass is weaponized and impactful. And, in leaning into the most aggressive side of sludge pedigree, "Brat Salad" is laced with considerable hardcore vitriol. The anguished vocals could strip paint. There's a whole lot of caustic and incendiary energy here. The urgency of the vocals pairs nicely with the more traditionally plodding presence of the doomy instrumentation. If you enjoy this track, I recommend checking out the prior two singles--"opener "Buzzmonkey" is brief and fairly blistering, and "peacock syndrome" takes a similarly powerful drive while extending it into a longer form composition. And lest it be forgot: the music video! The fragmented greysclae imagery suits the sonics quite well, and the generally morose footage of driving down a featureless road that encompasses the first half is uncomfortably medetative. The back half introduces some remarkable lo-def imagery: the band performing, faces, unfurling hands, guns, violence, riot police. It is stark and monochromatic and effective. It now occurs to me that I've overcomplicated this writeup significantly. I could have simply said that "Brat Salad" is heavy as fuck at left it at that. So: "Brat Salad" is heavy as fuck. Check it out, and keep an eye (and ear) out for Narcissist on November 26th. Slôdder - Narcissist will be released November 26, 2025 via Shit County Records. Find it here. 
Written by: The Administrator
After spending a long day trudging through a world that seems fully intent on chewing me up and spitting me out, the first thing I want to do is listen to a band that seems fully intent on chewing me up and spitting me out. No, literally, the very first thing. I get in my car, crank that angry spiteful music, and enjoy life for a little while. Enter Kingston-upon-Hull's Mastiff. Prime candidate for a wholeheartedly cathartic commute. Deprecipice, the band's fourth full length, marks a shift into more overt hardcore waters, allowing the grind, sludge, and deathier elements of their prior work to take more of a back seat. That's not to say, of course, that those qualities have dissipated--more that they have been more fully and organically incorporated into a (somehow) meaner and harder Mastiff sound. We can churn out descriptors all damn day. Deprecipice is seething, ugly, belligerent, harrowing, punishing, relentless, crushing, bleak, vengeful. There's an implicit curiosity that arises from the band's uniquely gnarly intimidation factor: just what level of violence are Mastiff actually capable of? They can howl and roar and batter the flimsy wooden fence in Beast-esque fashion, but what happens when they actually get their hands on you? There's tension in the implication. This is a massive album, rage-fueled and roiling, and as good as their discography is thusfar, I consider it to be far and away their best work to date. |
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