Eibon - Entering Darkness

Eibon, not to be confused with the Phil Anselmo/Fenriz band, is a French doom act named after Clark Ashton Smith's Book of Eibon, a tome of great and terrible power.  Fittingly, the music they play is hypnotic and repulsive, a black tar pit full of bones.  Sludgy vocals alternate with frenzied, barely audible sounds of panic and madness, as if the narrator was slowly losing his mind.  The occasional blast beat/tremolo part crops up from time to time, but only to heighten the weighty slowness of the rest of the album.   A must have, one of my favorite releases of last year.

Path to Oblivion

Atlantean Kodex - The Pnakotic Demos

One of my most played albums of 2010 was Atlantean Kodex's ambitious album The Golden Bough, one of those rare records to which the word "epic" can be applied without just meaning "long songs" and "attention-span challenging." This demo recording, released a handful of years earlier, showed them honing their chosen methods to a fine point with which to pierce dimensional boundaries. It's named for the pre-human manuscripts recording the secret history of the universe, having been added to and modified over many millenia, much like the human Bible, albeit on a much larger scale.
Similar perspective-shattering broadmindedness is a key factor here, and I must warn you that the depth and breadth do not begin to emerge until careful study is made. The devoted student will find much to absorb, however.
'neath shadow green and standing stone
Far from the rule of modern throne

Mars - Reign of Suns

Crustacean Doom from the deep, drifted onto to shore to fester under the harsh New Orleans sun. A hard exoskeleton of low-end hum surrounded by inky clouds of dueling guitar, thrashing tentacles, and resinous excretion. Sometimes moving with terrifying speed, but more frequently lurking in a darkened tide pool, patient, dreaming.
Watching.