Black Hole - Land of Mystery

We can't stray too far from the doom metal, though, can we? Ah well, so it goes. Dyed-in-the-wool Italians Black Hole unveiled this dark gem in 1985 and it proved to be their only full length for fifteen years. What we have upon opening the crypt is a glittering artifact of dark beauty and dread. It opens at a fairly straightforward metallic gallop obscured by swirling clouds of organ, but soon enough grinds to a halt and then resumes it forward advance at a sludgy crawl, almost as if the album had been fleeing some horrid beast and, upon the advent of the second song, it trips over a gnarled root and is overtaken. Things continue to spiral outward and downward from there, following the traditional Lovecraftian arc of sweaty descent into madness and finally oblivion. One will often see this band compared to its countrymen in Death SS, but this is probably more due to lazy thinking than true insight. There is not one iota of irony or self-awareness here, lending an atmosphere of true menace and, yes, mystery, qualities mostly lacking on any given Death SS record.
Don't forget to turn off the smoke machine.