Colour Haze - Tempel

Sweet Merciful Crap!  What a week.  Posting may be sporadic until the first of the month, wee ones, as your old Uncle Abdul is doing double duty outside the Swamp - burning the brazier at both ends.  All that will fit inside my enfeebled ears tonight is this soothing mystical album from Germany's premier desert rock band, Colour Haze.  Inspired by the power trios of yore and the powerful unnameable forces of the space-time continuum, the cosmic yawn filtered through flange and fuzz, they coax the listener into an out-of-body voyage through the four elements of matter and the various states of consciousness. 

Ozean

The Slow Death

Abiding my love for obscure sub-genres and strange hybrids, let's all get dragged backwards through this haunting death-doom variation from Australia's The Slow Death. Beginning with sodden blankets of earthy guitar similar to Warning, and exchanging Patrick Walker's ghost-ridden anguished vocals for some spooky siren whisperings way up at the high end of the register, and some Skepticism-styled funeral growling on the low end, this self-titled LP is their only release. A widely varying pace and sinister internal logic, not to mention the occasional horror movie keyboard melody, give it the air of an ill omen. Interestingly, some of the members of this band are also in the wildly dissimilar Corpsickle and Murkrat.
Dark Days

Orthodox - Amanecer En Puerta Oscura

Spain's Orthodox plays a curious hybrid of hypnotic drone-doom, bass-driven bop jazz, and liturgical chant informed by the folklore of their native land. For those skeptical of that description, know that they sound completely unlike any other metal band, and have been one of my personal favorites since their first release. This year's Baal is an instant cult classic, but this second album is perhaps the strongest and most coherent statement. Equally influenced by Mingus, Morricone, and the Melvins, this strange and slowly unfolding flower rewards careful and repeated listening. The vocals take a distinctive tack too, warbling and ululating like one of Edison's wax cylinders, a transmission from beyond
time and reason. Frankly, I'm surprised I haven't posted anything by them yet - this is the kind of thing that keeps the Swamp florid.
Templos

Celephaïs

This is another new release made available as a free download by the artist, German one-man metal act Celephaïs. Combining the atmospherics and drone of black metal acts like Fen or Altar of Plagues with the cinematic sweep of, say, Fall of Efrafa, this instrumental album is pleasantly entrancing and meditative for the most part, but punctuated with bursts of dissonant blasting and menace.

Solace

Menace Ruine - The Die is Cast

While their debut LP Cult of Ruins would put them squarely in the psychedelic black metal camp occupied by Nachtmystium and Oranssi Pazuzu, this follow-up dialed the tempos down and upped the humming feedback and weird found noises to a degree where Quebec's Menace Ruine begins to explore the wicked droning heaviness of early Earth or something like Thorr's Hammer, while still keeping a cloven hoof in black metal territory as well. This album was widely panned but as I sit awaiting the approaching thunderstorm, with the wind lashing about outside, it sounds just perfect.
The Bosom of the Earth

Let the Right One In

Well, let's have a bite of this excellent, expansive soundtrack to one of my favorite newer movies, composed by scholarly Swede Johan Söderqvist. Anyone who has seen the film will no doubt remember the haunting dirge-like drones punctuated by slashes of noise and splatters of dissonance every time violence erupts onscreen. Evoking the icy chill and desolation of the movie and also the weight of sadness and inevitability, this wonderful, horrible soundtrack is for nocturnal use only.
Then We Are Together

Eight Hands for Kali - Mount Meru

I had a dream last night that Sunn O))) released a documentary film about soup entitled, of course, Soupp O))). What does this mean? Hopefully nothing, aside from the fact that it's a bad idea to eat leftover enchiladas before bed, but it did remind me that I haven't posted anything by Eight Hands for Kali in over a year. Featuring Topo from El Natas and Tas from Electric Wizard, this Buddhist War Doom band creates smoky, sinister snake-charming metal as hypnotic and resinous as opium. Although this album is a scant half hour, criminally short for this kind of music, it nonetheless packs a serious wallop and may leave you drooling and soiling your drawers.
Apocalypse Love Hypnotized

Nikki Sudden and Rowland S. Howard - Kiss You Kidnapped Charabanc

Here's another album of unlikely collaborators - Nikki Sudden, front man of the wildly underrated post-punks Swell Maps, and Rowland S. Howard, guitar player of The Birthday Party. Come to think of it, can you call a band post punk when they started in the early 70's? Proto-post-punk, does that work?
Nonetheless, no post-punk this; instead we have dirge-like acoustic jangling stabbed through with sinister two-note electrical stings from Howard, with each man trading off vocals. Not many lovey-dovey duets here, sadly. The atmosphere of dread is palpable, with much pregnant weight lurking between the sustained notes, and steadily-rising maddening percussion and ambient racket on certain tracks. Chilling.
Hello Wolf (Little Baby)

Methuselah - The Sleeper in the Abyss

I was initially quite overjoyed to discover this obscure slab of funereal doom based upon several lesser-known Lovecraftian works, but upon opening my mind to its dark whispers the horror of my situation was thrown into sharp relief. Paced as slowly as the passage of aeons, littered with cruel, unintelligible voices calling obscenities in forgotten languages, framed by seemingly random notes plucked out on dusty, detuned piano, and hinting unsubtly at a universe of more horrid things, The Sleeper in the Abyss is the last recorded testament of British hermit Methuselah. As to his whereabouts I cannot speak, but surely he must've been in the final stages of syphilitic insanity by the time of this recording, for it contains nary a shred of human warmth or sympathy. A cold, bleak void yawns outward from my headphones and into my ears.
Ecce Lex

Varghkoghargasmal - Drowned in Lakes

Here's another strange one for you, a one-man black metal band from Germany that's equal parts madness and beauty. Varghkoghargasmal plays what is referred to as Wooden Metal, which would seem to be a mutation of atmospheric black metal similar to Swamp favorites Forgotten Land, but with a bent towards surf guitar, cheesy haunted house keyboards, and drums that sound as if they were laid down arbitrarily and without regard to which song they belong to, or what tempo they should be. It's pretty baffling, to be honest, but quite tasty for fans of unintentional gibbering brilliance created by the mad and retarded. Hints of Dead Milkmen, Men's Recovery Project, Sunn O))), Screaming Lord Sutch, the Mummies, Old Skull, and other sublime abortions.
Taste Of Orodrir

Warning - Blessed By the Sabbath

An early demo from Britain's traditionalist doom-mongers Warning. Truly epic, and glacially slow, but with a fine sense of song-craft and melody largely absent or suppressed in most works of the genre. A crushing, exhausting, purging experience later perfected on their full length Watching from a Distance. Three songs here, twenty five minutes.
Bend under the weight of your guilt.

When - Death in the Blue Lake

We return to Norway once again, as it our wont in the wintertime, and as usual we've got something pretty strange on our hands. When was a one-man psych/prog/classical/noise act from the eighties who went on to influence the young black metal musicians once they started experimenting with synthesizers, ambience, and weirder things. The first half of this particular album is a twenty minute titular soundscape inspired by a famous Norwegian horror novel of the same name. It's bleak and chilling and those of you familiar with Satyricon's early work may spot some sections lifted wholesale for Dark Medieval Times. Side B is all over the place: Bowie-like robot pop, ritualistic chanting and percussion, yodeling through layered effects and echoes, groaning drones, and a Christmas themed noise piece that could have appeared on The Black Rider.
Behold

Buried at Sea - Ghost

Here's another fine example of the fact that "EPs" by doom metal bands are longer than many people's albums. In fact, what we have here, despite its thirty minute running time, is one song stretched to span an ocean. I have no idea what the lyrical subject matter may be, but as the vocals only bob to the surface around halfway and mostly vanish thereafter, we're obviously more concerned here with atmosphere and menace. While quite heavy in parts, there are stretches of grainy static punctuated by clanging bells, chirping noise, and distant footsteps in the sand. To me this is evocative of later Blind Dead films Ghost Galleon and Night of the Seagulls, both of which are sluggishly paced but punctuated by genuine moments of repulsive horror. Plus, we have this beautiful cover art to hint at what is entombed herein.

Moss - Tombs of the Blind Drugged

Salutations, worm food! Welcome to day one of Blind Dead Week, in which I will post seven (or more) albums of undead Templar music in tribute to Amando de Ossorio's four part series of Spanish zombie mayhem. Today's special is from British super-sludge band Moss, and it creeps along at the torturous, measured pace of marching skeletal feet, creeping ever-so-slowly after you, tireless. Containing four songs in forty unbearable minutes, including a flayed-open Discharge cover, this is considered by the band to be an EP. Much more hooded horror to come this week, boys and girls, so stay tuned.
Blind terror strikes fear into the hearts of innocent people.

Corrupted - El Mundo Frio

Behold, little one, it snows in the Swamp! As I huddle next to my tiny space heater and type with frostbitten tendrils, my sluggish brain refuses to spin in its skull. Perhaps the only answer is to post an album as glacial and frigid as my mind: El Mundo Frio. Japanese doom-mongers Corrupted released this master opus in 2005 - one seventy minute song, sung mostly in Spanish, concerning the coming of another ice age and the annihilation of all life on earth. Long instrumental passages of great beauty frame chunks of ugly squealing and thunderous cacophony, only to ebb back into near silence over time. Unlike many obscenely lengthy songs by similar bands, this is thoroughly through-composed, only repetitive in a broader, more abstract sense, and never boring. A remarkable, moving work, and an omen of things to come.
Hope is in the end of sky

Skepticism - Stormcrowfleet

Busy, busy days here in the Swamp, lately, but I must set aside some time to care for my little Swamplings, oh yes. Skepticism's Stormcrowfleet is debatably the first "funeral doom" album ever. Doubling the minimalism and measure slowness of their forbears, from Black Sabbath to Candlemass, Skepticism added heavy organ, mallet-played marching drums, and mystical chanting, effectively creating their own sub-genre and pushing the outer fringes of heavy metal into strange, ominous territory. Resonating at once blasphemous and pious, timber-rattlingly loud and subtly beautiful, Stormcrowfleet is a must for fans of Thergothon, Moss, Catacombs, and the like, even though none of those bands sound quite like this one.
At the swamps
Mist is rising

Equimanthorn - Nindinugga Nimshimshargal Enlillara

I've a nekronfession to kultivate, myswamptendersapplinga, imma try and maintainamagate some repromobation on the alchomuggahhohl: decanting the indefatigable - buttsinceHallowmoween yr hummblehost experimence ein liifamachange: sacred riitumal uv iinebrNATION slowly-liike serpenmetiine arounden that cerebellum. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Nindinugga Nimshimshargal Enlillara wgah'nagl fhtagn n'shit.
The Cold Mystic Winds Of Nanakanisurra (Dwelling South In The Crimson Desert: Roba El Khaliyeh)

Om - Live at the Empty Bottle

Quickly, then, here is a bootleg live performance by drone superstars Om live in Chicago in 2007. Beware of speaker-shredding bass levels on this recording! Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to post something more in depth and obscure but time is short tonight.
Hrmmmmmmmmmmmm

Horseback - Invisible Mountain

This is the first release by North Carolina's one man ambient project Horseback to contain additional musicians and (I believe) to be released on vinyl. Breaking from his traditional guitar drone style to embrace a fuller, nastier sound, Jenks Miller herein explores unfamiliar territory with startling results. Having as much in common with Neil Young's stranger experiments such as the polarizing Dead Man soundtrack as it does with the popular ambient black metal sound, Invisible Mountain is available free as well as for purchase numerous places, but why not get it from the trusty ol' Swamp?
Here

Forgotten Land -Samhain (Autumn)

Well, it's certainly not Samhain season yet, but since it's the first day of September, let's fire up some Forgotten Land and dance naked around the bonfire, shall we? Another mysterious one-man project, FL combines ambient drones with field recordings and sounds of nature, no-fi black doom with pagan bacchanalia. FL also possesses one of the most excellent black metal logos of all time. Words are wasted describing such music, and in debating the inherent contradictions of downloading such organic material in digital form - luckily we're not here to debate, we're here to burn!
*chirp*