Sloath are the new addition to the roster of British underground label Riot Season. This five-piece sludge metal band from Brighton was formed in the summer of 2007, and two years later went on to record their self-titled debut, that came out last week.
Title: Sloath
Label: Riot Season
Release date: May 24th 2010
Recording date: 2009
Tracklist: 1. Black Hole 11:02 2. Cane Trader 11:00 3. Please Maintain 21:59
The super-heavy and distorted sound of this epic 44-minute monster instantly reveals Sloath's major influences: the ultra-(s)low monolithic doom of Earth, the repetitive blues dirges of Sleep, and, ultimately, the heavy riffing of genre-patriarchs Black Sabbath. The album contains just three tracks. The 11-minute "Black Hole" opens the proceedings, boasting terrifying, agonized screams over an extremely decadent, endlessly repeated blues riff. And the 11-minute "Cane Trader" (check the Myspace link above for an audio stream) is a hellish stoner nightmare that features the heaviest riff on the album, which is repeated for five minutes before the track is very gradually torn down towards a complete stand-still in the closing minute. The 22-minute monolith "Please Maintain" that closes the album, starts on a very calm and melodic note, painstakingly building up tension until after nine minutes the volume and distortion levels are cranked up explosively and the track soon erupts into a full-on sonic assault and a howling guitar solo hovers over it. After seventeen minutes the storm subsides, leaving us with five more minutes of slow, desolate riffing. Although the ideas here may not be extremely original, they are flawlessly implemented, to harrowing effect.
8.2/10 (I admit, my rating is probably somewhat biased: I simply have a sweet tooth for this sort of stuff!)
Here is a clip of a live performance in Spain, september 2009.
Reactions are always very welcome!
