the Evil : " Evil"

This band from Brazil is darker and heavier than most of the female fronted stoner/doom bands that pass through my in-box. Granted she has a masculine voice in some sense, if we are talking about a man with a feminine voice...think Rob Halford styled power metal here. So while this does give them a late 80s doom sound the fact the guitar is so dense brings if up into this decade. The bass tone is pretty 80s though. "Screams" finds their groove getting murkier and the sludge heavy guitar tone not pulling the weight by itself. Doesn't suck but doesn't grab my attention like the first song. "Sacrifice to the Evil" has more of a cheesy Halloween sound to it with some "Omen" style chanting. I guess it makes about as much sense as some of Acid Witch's stuff, but Acid Witch gels better thematically.

They trudge on with "Satan 2 " I guess this a sequel. Not sure where they lyric "from Russia with love/ comes in " ?   With doom or really any genre the challenge is to be your self, but bring something new to the table .With black metal the problem is blast beats begin to sound the same. With doom it's recycling the Sabbath chug. Think of it like warming up a piece of day old pizza in the microwave. The first time you nuke it, the pizza will still be worth eating. The second time , it's going to be either soggy or like rubber. This is what happens on "Sliver Razor". I can only taste the rubbery aftermath and not what worked on the first song.

They give "Ancients" a little more breathing room, it follows a similar formula as the song "Black Sabbath" by the band of the same name, you may or may not have heard of them. This brings us to doom rule number 1 " a little Black Sabbath worship goes a long way". Now these kids are not breaking this rule as bad as many bands. The fact the vocals are not going all Ozzy certainly helps. I would just like to hear them pull from more colors of influence. I am beginning to hear people already calling albums the album of the year and it's not June yet. This is not bad but I am giving it a 7.5 so it's safe to say it's not going to make my 10 doom albums of the year list. If you like things that are as dark as Acid Witch , but more doom than death metal then it might be worth your time.

Black Fucking Cancer : s/t

With a need for speed this nasty black metal band might attack their songs, but from the opener they do so with some thrash sensibilities. The Slayer influences is more tangible than any fetish for Darkthrone they might have. I did have to take a second listen to the finer points of "Acid Ocean" which follows the more polished arrangement of the opening track.The chanted vocal behind the blasts add a darker layer to their sound. They hit you with razor sharp riffing . This is not just throw a mic in a dark room and go wild with blast beats, which might be to the dismay of less discerning fans of black metal who go for any old blast beat. The energy they hit some of these chord progressions does have a raw power than reminds me of 1349 in places. The members of this band also hail from the projects Sentenced to Burn and Circle of Eyes. If that means anything to you. Some of the fat could have been trimmed from the 12 minute "Acid Ocean" namely some of the feed back that bridges into the song's final act.

Things slow down and find the black in an actual groove for "Blood Stained". They are unable to restrain themselves and hurl their instruments back into a blast beat. "Sinnritualvoid" lingers in feedback. In threatens several times in the first four and a half to become an actual song , but fights the urge to do so.  When it does it's more double bass driven. The blasts soon follow and thankfully only for sparse spasms, until the six minute mark. "Wall of Corpses" just kind of falls out of the previous song as this album begins to become more of a blur and lose the personality it was appearing to establish for the sake of being a feral mess. "Wall of Corpses" doesn't waste your time with drawn out sections of feedback. "Exit Wounds" finds itself dominated by the drums, which more often than not are locked in a blast beat. The darker more doom infused section midway into the song is a more powerful sonic statement than when everything was racing at the speed of chaos.

They indulge in some more atmospheric noise on the last song. Once they are galloping ahead into the brimstone, the blast become over indulgent and every thing begins to lose its luster as rusty blur of noise. I'll round this down to a 7.5 as it has some powerful moments at the beginning but started to lose me on the final two songs, but even then there were some moments that connected.


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