Occult Vibe Haven (OVH)
I came to Imperfection with a bit of caution, not because I doubted HEBI KATANA, but because after three albums of raw, sticky Tokyo doom, you start wondering how much more weight a trio can carry without spilling over into overkill. What hits first is how completely they don’t care about that question. The riffs […]
Some bands write songs. These maniacs in Liguria build collapsing wormholes and then jump inside. Sideral Voivod isn’t polished, it’s not safe, it’s a fuzz-drunk meteor crash rolling downhill until it smokes out the neighborhood. Heavy grooves that lurch and stagger, riffs like molten concrete, bass throb that sounds more animal than instrument. You can […]
From the rainy, gray corners of Portland, Oregon, a new monster crawls out of the sludge. Chaos and Catastrophes, the first full-length from Ravine, doesn’t bother with pleasantries – it hits you fast and leaves your head ringing like you just got flattened by a truck. This record smells like bourbon, burnt rubber, and wet […]
Nepal Death never sounded like a band that wanted to be filed neatly in the record store. With Pilgrims and Psychonauts they’ve doubled down on that instinct and made something that’s too heavy for the cosmic folk crowd, too freaked for the stoner riff bros, too raw for the synth fetishists. It’s not really about […]
Insomniac’s debut hits hard and slow, like something dragging itself out of the earth and into the sky. Atlanta made a band that doesn’t really sit in stoner rock, doom, or anything you can name. It’s heavy, sure, but it also stretches, bends, drifts. You can feel it. You can get lost in it. The […]
Margarita Witch Cult’s Strung Out In Hell doesn’t play nice. It drags you by the hair straight into the furnace and keeps you there until your skin blisters. This is Birmingham metal the way it’s meant to be: filthy, cracked, ringing with that factory clang that never leaves the bloodstream of this city. You can […]
Nothing polite here. Nothing neat. HolyRoller don’t bother with tidy riffs or clean choruses – they deal in dirt, fuzz, and the kind of riffs that crawl under your skin and stay there. Rat King hits like a fuse lit in a basement; you don’t just listen, you get shoved into it. The record thrums […]
There’s something about hearing a band record straight from their rehearsal space that either exposes the cracks or lights the fuse. Atom Juice chose the fuse. You can hear the four walls breathing in the room – that wood-panel warmth, the hiss of amps pushed past polite conversation, cymbals that bloom out into the ether […]
There’s a certain smell you get when a band decides they’re done sanding down the edges — it’s like the air in a garage after three nights of amps running hot and beer sweating on the floor. Metamorph has that smell all over it. WITCHRIDER’s latest isn’t here to charm you with the kind of […]
Let’s be clear from the jump: Metanoia doesn’t ask for your attention – it drags you under by the collar of your patched-up denim vest and doesn’t let go until it’s rattled your teeth and rearranged something in your chest cavity. This is a record born from smoke and reverb, but sharpened by lived experience […]