Review: Wake Brewing Recommends

March 26th, 2021 your new favorite doom band drops a bowl cashing album, From The Graveyard, that is punching the pulse of doom. 1782 has been busy since their start in late ‘18, putting out a full length, a split with Acid Mammoth, and then working on “Graveyard” last year.  First listen automatically sends you to a realm with cloaked time keepers setting the scene with rhythmic bass and drums that keep bowls packing at a steady pace giving the guitar plenty space to fill your mind with so much low tuned fuzz you’ll have to cut it with an athame knife.  Close your eyes and let the riffs of “Black Void” enter you, bringing you towards the sounds of water against rock and the smell of salt in the air, ushered into the water and encircled by cloaked ones, listening to their chants, dropping your robes and revealing your scaled skin under the moon. The cloaked ones keep their pace, whilst the leader chants, unveiling dragons of smoke trailing through the sky leaving aurora borealis trails blending the sky and the cosmos into one for the closing tracks “Seven Priests” and “In Requiem.”  1782 know how to write without using filler; the riffs and notes are purposefully there. Instead of long build ups, the band throws you in the salty marshes leaving you to pull yourself out, reborn into their coven. Catch “The Chosen One” over at 1782doom.bandcamp.com. Listened with headphones and through a system, and I can’t wait to pick one of the vinyl up and soak up that tone. Especially for the drop 3:20 min into Priestess of Death, BANGER!  FFO: Electric Wizard, Sleep, Conan

Heretical Sect - Rapturous Flesh Consumed

by Andy Daggett & Adam Hurlburt

The American Southwest is one of the most romanticised locations in the world, but there’s a darkness there too often glazed over. Sante Fe, New Mexico’s Heretical Sect are on a mission to expose the region’s long and ongoing history of horrific violence and environmental destruction. “Rapturous Flesh Consumed,” their new full-length for Gilead Media recounts tales of genocide, slavery, and racial, religious, and cultural persecution via a blistering brand of blackened death doom. Heretical Sect aims to break the chains of history and breathe new life into the cold darkness of the desert, engaging in aural battle with zealous oppressors of past and present. At the needle drop the band unleashes a wall of tremolo-picked fury akin to a massive dust storm ready to envelop all in its path. “Rising Light of Lunacy” is a charge into the fray. One can easily imagine clashing with shiny-armored conquistadors, pitting spear against sword, brother against other, motivated by the fire in one’s heart. “The Depths of Weeping Infinity” is a four-plus-minute spiritual roar tinted celestial by reverb-drenched guitar squalling. “Baptismal Rot and Ash” kisses flame to the mouths of false clerics with genocide on their tongues, building to tasty release with a gnarly guitar divebomb at the seven-minute mark. “Pit Abominations” sounds like a dark ritual pact with shapeshifting indigenous devils whose names we dare not mention in print—buoyed by the sound of wolves howling amidst the storm. By the time the album closes with “Ritual Inversion” your teeth are stained with conquistador blood, you survey your ranks, regroup, and steel yourself for more. And there’s always more, they just take on new forms. Know your enemy. “Rapturous Flesh Consumed” is as technically impressive as it is evocative, which explains its popularity on the doom charts. You know what to do. QC locals, hit up at Ragged Records & Music.

Review: Wake Brewing Recommends

“... And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss gazes also into you.” This heads up from Nietzsche feels especially prescient right now. In times defined by confrontation with darkness, one inevitably encounters darkness inside themselves. Primitive Man’s new album for @relapserecords, aptly titled “Immersion,” is a cannonball jump headlong into that darkness, a baleful embrace of the yawning void Negativity. Exactly what you’d expect from a self-described “nihilistic trio.” But do not mistake this record for a wallow. It is a cathartic assault against the weakest parts of the self and the virulent proliferation of such across an entire species, now 7.5 billion thick and climbing. Be wary where and when you play this record, it transforms speakers into portals to the netherworld. Denver-based @primitivemandoom have perfected their sonic structure over the years, combining elements of doom, sludge, death, and harsh noise into a kind of molten lead mechagodzilla fueled by abandoned dreams. But “Immersion” feels less like a monster attack and more like a fall down a mineshaft, thanks to skillful application of reverb across the recording. It’s simultaneously cavernous and claustrophobic. Joe Linden’s stereo-panned drums define both the walls of the shaft and the speed of descent, while Ethan Lee McCarthy’s guitar and Jonathan Campos’ bass embody nothing short of the void itself. There in the cold darkness, McCarthy’s ripped larynx howls swirl, moribund and misanthropic. Boil them down to their essence and they reflect an infamous quote from a cautionary classic, “if you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” With this record, born of Orwellian anxiety and existential dread, Primitive Man defines the enemy. They say knowing is half the battle. Now it’s time to take up arms. 

Check this record out, and buy some merch to keep the band afloat in these trying times. Vinyl available at @ragged_records_and_music, or your local discerning record shop. Review by our own @modelyear1983 and @andythedag

#wakebrewingrecommends #dealerschoice #primitiveman #relapserecords #doommetal #deathsludge #beerandmetal #beeranddoom #wakebrewing #brothersparris

Lowrider - Refractions

Reviewed by Adam Hurlburt

Lowrider’s “Refractions” is 41 minutes of pedal to the metal heavy desert rock ala Kyuss, Truckfighters, and, well, Lowrider. The Swedish quartet were expert-level dealers of the genre in the mid-1990s and early 2000s. This is their first release off a nearly 20-year hiatus. And it delivers the goods. Stockholm’s a helluva long way from the Palm Desert, but @lowridergram absolutely nail the bottom-heavy blues for the red sun. Always have. Does “Refractions” break new ground in desert rock? Not really. But if you put it on while driving you’ll find out exactly how fast your car can go. This record is a hyperdimensional Trans Am burnout, sister. And to paraphrase the late, great Lux Interior, if you can’t dig that you can’t dig nothing. Lowrider have bestowed on us an essential, genre-defying album with killer grooves and nary a misplaced riff. You get exactly what you want exactly when you want it. Put this on, and if you don’t say “goddamn” to yourself at least once I don’t think we can be friends. The massive intro riff on “Ol’ Mule Pepe” is so good, for example, that it made me laugh out loud. “Refractions” is a hippie speedball escape pod the hell outta 2020. What more could you ask for? Snag you a copy of by way of Blues Funeral Records.

Review by our own @modelyear1983. #wakebrewingrecommends #dealerschoice #desertrock #stonerrock #fuzz #beerandmetal #wakebrewingcvlt #wakebrewing #brothersparris