Occult Vibe Haven (OVH)
SoftSun is one of those projects where the lineup already tells you roughly what to expect before the album even starts. Gary Arce’s desert-rock background colliding with Pia Isaksen’s colder, more atmospheric approach sounds like a strange combination on paper, but “Eternal Sunrise” rarely feels forced or overly conceptual. The record moves very naturally between […]
I’ve been listening to X‑ÆON by Giöbia a lot lately. The French band released it in October 2025 on Heavy Psych Sounds Records. Right from the start, it grabs you with buzzing guitars and steady drums. The first track, “Voodoo Experience”, is fuzzy and slow, with the drums keeping a nice beat. It’s heavy but […]
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; […]
Some records hit you in the gut. Others in the teeth. This Side of the Dirt does both. First note drops and you feel it in your ribcage, like a van rolling over your spine. Dusted Angel didn’t come back to make a point – they came back because they couldn’t not. Fifteen years since […]
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 […]
Born in 2011 from the ashes of Italian heavy rock four-piece Gandhi’s Gunn, it didn’t take long for ISAAK to sign a worldwide deal on US label Small Stone Records for the reissue of their ass-kicking debut album “The Longer The Beard The Harder The Sound” in June 2013. Oozing thundering riffs and raw energy, […]
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 […]
It’s not easy to return after seven years without sounding either out of breath or like you’re chasing ghosts. But Electric Citizen doesn’t trip over nostalgia or buckle under expectation – EC4 hits like a stoned cobra coiled under a velvet curtain. This is not a record that reintroduces the band with a polite handshake. […]
There’s nothing quite like a debut that doesn’t sound like a debut. From the jump, Black Honey Cult’s Black Honey Cult doesn’t feel like a first record – it feels like the sound of a band that’s been around long enough to know what the hell they’re doing. You can tell this isn’t some band […]
There’s an unspoken expectation when dropping the needle on an OCULTUM record. You brace yourself. You prepare for the sheer weight of it. Their past two albums, Ceremonia Oculta Primitiva and Residue, established the Chilean trio as a crushing force in the underground doom/stoner/sludge scene. With Buena Muerte, they don’t just reaffirm that status – […]