LUNAR SWAMP "UnderMudBlues" EP

If you think Fuzzy is going to dig the debut EP from a doom blues band named LUNAR SWAMP with deep roots in the Italian doom scene, then you would be absolutely correct. Lunar Swamp has dropped half an hour of fuzzy riffage with vocals that could only come from the darkest, dankest depths of The Swamp. These five songs will leave your ears dripping with swamp moss and reaching for your jug of Bayou rum, and paddling your boat across the fetid waters to your next crawdad boil. Have a listen to UnderMudBlues from Italy's Lunar Swamp:


The fuzzy riffs, the clean guitar solos, the effects ... all of these combine to make an excellent heavy blues EP. But what puts it over the top are the vocals. The slow, bluesy delivery combined with the dark gloominess just kills it.

Play this album on repeat. One listen is not going to be enough.

Looking for an album to spin at your next swamp party? UnderMudBlues is it.

Worried there's not enough Southern blues on here? Check out the harmonica and jaw harp. And the atmospheric effects.

Fuzzy's Favorite track on UnderMudBlues is "Green Swamp" not only for the cool title but because it captures the band's heavy blues with the best of its haunting vocals. Check out the video for Green Swamp on YouTube:


The Mrs. Cracklins' mini-review:

• Haunting vocals
• Soulful rock with harmonica
• Powerful bass
• Excellent soundtrack for Happy Hour

Lunar Swamp has its roots in BRETUS, an Italian doom outfit dating back to 2000. Be sure to check them out, here's my review, you will dig their music if you are digging Lunar Swamp.


Lunar Swamp hails from Italy's Catanzaro Stone Mountain with the members:

• Mark Wolf: Vox, Harmonica, Fx
• Machen: High and Low Guitars
• S.M. Ghoul: Drums

Oh hell yes! DOUBLE HORSE serves up the slow fuzzy doom that I dig, with layers of psychedelic guitar and vocals risen from the grave. Add some killer samples and sound effects to the mix, and the end result is an album that delivers heavy riffs from start to finish with an energy level that is off the charts. Check out "The Great Old Ones" from Double Horse:


Every song on "The Great Old Ones" is top rate, and I'll single out "Seventh Seal" because of its absolutely fantastic guitar work that sails over the heavy tombstones like a psychedelic mushroom cloud. This entire album is doom psych of the very finest order.

Merch! Get their CD and shirts from the Double Horse page on Bandcamp.

DOUBLE HORSE

DOUBLE HORSE is from Spain with members:

• Indio - Lead guitar
• Javi - Bass guitar
• Guille - Lead Vocals and drums

Listen to "Seventh Seal" from Double Horse on The Swamp Radio the new sound of the heavy underground.

MAHARA debut album "The Gathering"

You know the music is going to be killer when one of your bands suggests an album to you. One day last week I got a DM from Dos Brujos saying to check out the debut album from Barcelona doom band MAHARA. And all I can say is, Dos Brujos knows their doom! This album is so solid that it is a little dizzying to comprehend how it is a debut album. Check out "The Gathering" --


The album opens up very ominously. The tones are pure doom and the chants are nearly incomprehensible. And just as you are straining to hear the words, they drop the riff hammer on your vulnerable head and off we go for 45 minutes of pounding doom with haunting vocals.


"God's Requiem" is a little shorter than the opening track, but it kicks right in with a pretty fast riff. I really dig doom that keeps the tempo going nice and strong like this. Doom doesn't have to be funeral march. This song gets downright punchy at times.


The middle track "Wizard's Tower" slows things back down, amps up the chilling chants and necro noises, and delivers what is maybe the strongest riff on the album. Nothing but solid songs throughout.


"Merga" might be my favorite song, but really I am just splitting hairs here because every track on this album is pure gigantic doom riffage. Merga has sound effects and screams and howls laid over the top of the heavy thundering bass line which give it the sound of a haunted house dance party. I love that the riff is pretty fast, but never stops pounding your body and soul.

The title track "The Gathering" wraps up the album in epic style. It's long, it's heavy, and vocals are haunting throughout.


A little bio from the band:

MAHARA was born in 2018 in Sabadell, Barcelona by Marc R. (Drums), Pablo R. (Bass), Carles M. (Guitar), and Marta M. (Vocals).
We are influenced by Electric Wizard, Windhand, Mephistofeles, Messa, Weedeater...
The Gathering was recorded in one day at Estudio Aqueron with the help of Marcos from Ground.

"The Gathering" by Spain's MAHARA is 45 minutes of blissful, heavy, and entertaining doom. Dig it! Thanks again to Dos Brujos and be sure to follow Dos Brujos on Bandcamp to get the news on their upcoming CD!! Right on!

Follow Mahara at:

Codex Tenebris by OLDD WVRMS

Codex Tenebris offers nearly an hour of instrumental doom with some post metal edginess. All the tracks are long, the riffs are heavy, and the atmosphere is dark throughout. There is a blend of experimental and industrial going on here that keeps the sound fresh and interesting and involving, without getting away from the heaviness that drives the whole album. I really dig this.


"A l'or, aux ombres et aux abîmes" is the 2nd track (and the shortest at just over seven minutes) and it offers some of the best guitar work of the album. The riff picks up and then slows down again to switch up the pace of the doom, and ends with a relentless pounding before finishing with atmospheric effects.

Dig the very atmospheric video for the lead single "Ténèbres":


The third track "Misère & Corde" might have the most post metal sound to it with plenty of breaks and changes in tempo, and when the guitar solo kicks in to deliver the darkness, it just fits right in. This isn't really the kind of album that lets itself drift into the background. It insists on keeping your attention and rewards you with a variety of dark sounds.

Next to last is "La vallée des tombes" which is the slowest song on the album without losing your interest or the edginess that you hear throughout the album.

"Fléau est son âme" finishes things off with an epic 15 minutes that starts slow and moody and works its way through everything Oldd Wvrms has to offer, and gives a spoken word chant on top of that. This band really delivers.

One of the tags on the album's Bandcamp page is "ritual ambient" and while I think these songs are a little heavy for ambient, there is something about that tag which really works for me. Here is how the band describes their sound:

« Fear is the price for imagination » : these words can describe the descent into the depths of this overwhelming instrumental landscape, drawing his inspiration from all things obscure... Feel the serpent crawl upon your flesh and embrace the haunting emptiness within.

Oli : Bass, Cho : Drums, Ben : Guitar

Codex Tenebris by OLDD WVRMS is on Cursed Monk Records where you can grab the CD.

Few things in music get my attention like the words REMASTER. If a band thinks enough of their music to go back and give it some more love and attention, then I figure I am in for a special treat. And a special treat is exactly what THE HOWLING EYE have delivered with DYING SUN REMASTER (2019). It's 48 minutes minutes of heavy stoner doom metal, mostly instrumental, and pretty much just epic overall.

It's been a while since I listened to the original DYING SUN (2017) and also I wanted to compare it with the new remaster, and ..... oh hell yes! The entire sound is heavier and fuller. I'm on my good headphones so imagine how this is going to sound when I get it going on the big ancient speakers at Happy Hour tonight. I'm not sure if The Howling Eye has any plans for a CD or vinyl but I would pick up both of those if they came out. This remaster deserves nothing less.

And there's more! Because the remaster includes a new track THE HOWLING CAVES that was not on the original album.

And there's EVEN more because they also recorded different versions of the songs! These guys have been busy. Here is DYING SUN REDUX:


I asked the band about this pair of new records based on the original Dying Sun. Here is what The Howling Eye had to say about REDUX:

The story begins in Feb 2018. The nights were long and cold as fuck and we were recording Sonorous at Kongo Studio in a small town near Warsaw. We used to record our parts for most of the day, having only a gas cooker to make our food and a small, jet-engine-like gas heater to get us warm, so in the end of the day we were all dead tired. Usually we would just rest, jam or both, but on one particular night Jacek (our sound engineer) left for Warsaw to see GOLD, a great Dutch band. We got pretty high and I remembered the idea to re-record our first EP, but someone proposed to make it different. I had a country Texas-ranger-like version of Dying Sun in my mind for a while back then. Even earlier we had noticed that the riff from 'Junkhead' sounds kinda similar to 'To, Co Czujesz, To, Co Wiesz', a Polish reggae/dub classic. Thus we decided to re-record the EP, but each song was to be in a different style. We didn't know what to do with 'Dwa Złote', though, so I guess we just wanted to play it faster and it turned out to be a drum and bass song. We only did one take of everything so it's pretty floppy at some places, but I believe it turned out good. 

And about REMASTER:

Hubert proposed the remaster last Autumn. Our first EP was recorded live at Hubert's basement and pre-mixed (all the mics were recorded into one 'sum' track), so basically everything better than that would be an improvement. We decided that there is no point in fooling around, it sounded cheap, dark and rough, so we wanted even more of it. We basically added more bass where we could and compressed the shit out of everything to achieve this roaring kind of sound. We came up with lyrics to 'Dying Sun', so Hubert recorded them and I overdubbed my solos. Hubert also experimented with stacking layers, reverb and delays, so I hope it's as filthy and swampy as it should be. We also came up with this concept of a dualistic EP, which is reflected in the covers. One side of it is happy and chilly, and the other is pure doom.

The heaviness, the drop into the fuzz towards the end, and especially that short part where the vocals break into Swedish. There is so much to dig in this song.


Malsten is:

Manne - Vocals
Fredrik - Guitar
Andreas - Bass and synths
Joen - Drums

Malsten tells me they have more music in the works so be sure to follow them and stay in touch:

Debut single from VELA NEGRA

VELA NEGRA has their debut single ready to deafen your eardrums and it is called O Inevitável Porvir (The Unavoidable Future). This is very heavy doom with great riffs to keep things moving, and sometimes the guitar heads off into space to keep things very interesting. The vocals here are simply incredible, starting clean and slow and building to tougher screams later on. Take a listen:


I will keep it super real and tell you that this song sounds extra dark and mysterious to me because I cannot understand any Portuguese. I am the same way with any language, and when in English I love fuzzed-out vocals. The singing here is very clean with variety, too -- sometimes low and steady, sometimes building up with energy.

Vela Negra is a new band from Basilia, Brazil. The band is new but its members bring with them experience from previous bands, and that explains why this debut single is so good. Vela Negra is Marcel on guitar, Fabão on bass, Tamiel on drums, and Zé Dai Hou with vocals and production.

And good news! Vela Negra has more songs in the works, so be sure to follow them to stay in touch: