Bleeding Ear Canals...

Keeper / Sea Bastard - Split (2015)

Bringing together the US and UK, this six-label split provides one track each from Keeper and Sea Bastard, but stretches them out to over half an hour of sludgy doom.  Keeper goes first, with "777", a massive growler of a track featuring vocals like iron filings in a blender over the deep bass and guitar harmonizing, and the slow-crashing drums which provide punctuation to the drawn-out measures.  It's blackened sludge of extremely high quality, the kind that makes you feel like black frost should be creeping out of your speakers with each passing minute.
After a little background chatter, Sea Bastard's side starts up "Astral Rebirth", launching into a 20-minute dirge of metal and drone, voiced by an ominous growl that ramps up to savage howling alongside the strings as the energy mutates during the course of the journey.
It's two monster tracks that really go well together, and with supplies of the LP down to about a fifth of what was pressed, you'll want to act quickly to snag yourself one of these heavy slabs.  There's not much more that needs to be said, so if you're the type to get off on punishing your ears and nerves with some of the weightiest and dirtiest sludge out yet this year, get to it!
~ Gabriel

For Fans Of;    Trees, Fange, Coffin Torture, Deuil, Blind Samson

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Keeper - 777 (320 kbps)

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A Deep Rumble...

Sea Bastard ~ Scabrous (2013)

Let me start this off by saying that this album is big. Seems like a weird thing with which to start a review, but if you pick up a copy of this album, as soon as you see the track durations, it's going to hit you: these guys are in it for the long haul. See, there's only four tracks (which I'll get to in a minute), but those four songs add up to nearly an hour of hard, demanding doom resonance. Scabrous is so sludgy, so tar-stained and sticky, that it's probably not the best choice of listening while operating heavy machinery. They start things off with the staggering Nokken, which I'm frankly at a loss to describe; the best approximation I can provide is to ask you to imagine the perfect soundtrack to Godzilla destroying things, complete with atomic fire-breath. After Sea Bastard has established that they're not here to waste any doom-seeker's time, Nightmares Of The Monolith steps in for a more traditional doom metal round, setting up a rolling drum-riff against serrated guitar hooks. At only eight minutes (and eight seconds), Door Sniffer snags the position of shortest track, but packs enough wailing feedback into that time to make up for it, with the speed helping pick up momentum on the way to the final track. Metamorphic Possession lumbers out 20+ minutes, and in that time, things get even heavier; if you were seated while listening, you'll be melted in place by the end.

~ Gabriel

For Fans Of; EyeHateGod, Megasus, Gilla Bruja, Cough, Windhand

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Scabrous (320 kbps)

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The Dirty Bastards!...

Sea Bastard ~ Self Titled (2012)

Yeah, just a head up... This is gonna be somewhat of a loaded entry today, but I don't care to be quite honest. They're my mates, so y'all can just go screw yourselves. Beside's, it does kinda help that they're bloody awesome.
It's a real blessing and a burden sometimes, this site. On one hand I get sent an absolute metric shit ton of great bands, but on the other I end up struggling to get round to hitting up friends bands and projects just because of the shear work load. Still, better late than never, and good timing too because I actually finally got to see the chaps live for the first time last week. I should disclose that at the time I was sort of bobbing along the celling, high as a kite on shrooms. But I maintain that that just added to the spectacle. Ian took on the form of a howling Kraken and Olly resembled the bastard child of Gandolf and Bigfoot wielding an axe. That's pretty much all I can really recall, and even sober that description of Olly is wholly accurate. Nonetheless, these guys slay, big time. Every track smashed into you like huge waves of evil sludge. It's merciless and unrelenting hardcore doom at its finest, and I say that irregardless of friendship. For any of you reading, that revelled in the UK's late 90's/early 2000's hardcore/sludge scene this album will trawl up a whole load of nostalgia. It seems to echo with all the brutality and fuzzy-groove-laden-agro that was so prevalent in the bands formed from the ashes of the likes of Iron Monkey. Maybe it's just me looking back through rose tinted glasses, I don't know. But I wont harp on about days gone by, I know we have a whole bunch of followers from all over the world who wont relate to my ramblings one iota. So for them I say this... take Carcass and Eagle Twin, lock them in a room with nothing but instruments, whiskey and meth and this is the kind of sound you'd expect to be summoned through the carnage.
But why believe me? Go treat yourself to a big slab of bowel rumbling, gut wrenching, demonic sludge...Where you can name your own price too! Yeah, doesn't get much better than that does it!?
~ Jay

For Fans Of; Soilent Green, Eagle Twin, Sourvein, Iron Witch, Grime

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Sea Bastard (256kbps) • Great Barrier Riff (256kbps)

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