COSMIC REAPER sounds like they finally stopped asking whether something works and just let it exist. Bleed the Wicked, Drown the Damned doesn’t try to guide you, doesn’t frame itself, doesn’t bother explaining why it’s slow or heavy or uncomfortable. It just sits there, looming. The stoner rock looseness from earlier days feels burned off; whatever swing remains is sickly, bent, dragging its boots. Riffs don’t arrive so much as they surface, half-formed, then sink back under feedback and dust. Nothing flashy, nothing heroic. This is doom that smells like old carpet and hot tubes.
The guitars feel less like instruments and more like pressure zones. Two of them are circling each other, not harmonizing in a pretty way, more like overlapping weather systems. Sometimes they lock in, sometimes they grind sideways, sometimes they hold a note until it starts to feel wrong. Bass stays thick and stubborn, drums keep things moving without ever offering relief. No peaks, no drops – just sustained tension. Vocals don’t sell choruses or narratives; they hang in the mix like something overheard through a wall. Human, but distant. Angry, but controlled.
There’s psych here, sure, but it’s not colorful or expansive. It’s the claustrophobic kind. The kind that closes the room in instead of opening space. If you’re expecting the hazy, feel-good drift people still associate with stoner doom, this record doesn’t care. It’s heavier in a mental way more than a sonic one. You can hear old doom bones in it, and you can hear the band’s ’90s DNA too, but nothing feels quoted. No reverence. No cosplay. Just a band pulling from what stuck with them and leaving the rest behind.
What Bleed the Wicked, Drown the Damned really does is remove the safety rails. It doesn’t signal when to nod your head or when to zone out. It doesn’t care if you catch everything on the first spin. It’s slow, stubborn, and a little hostile, like it expects you to meet it halfway or not at all. COSMIC REAPER sounds less interested in being part of a scene here and more interested in sealing themselves off inside their own version of heaviness. Not a leap forward, not a reinvention – more like a door closing.
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Released by Heavy Psych Sounds on September 26th, 2025
