GrooveMonsteR - Rock Was Dead

GrooveMonsteR were a comedy stoner rock band from Brighton in the UK. For a number of years they made audiences all over Brighton laugh their asses off whilst remaining completely unable to stand still and look miserable, as stoner rock fans ought to do. GrooveMonsteR supply solid rock grooves with amusing and comical lyrics about all kinds of things over the top. Such classics as Rocket Mice and Twist Your Beard always get a great crowd reaction.

Rock Was Dead is a compilation of all the tracks GrooveMonsteR ever recorded for their various demo releases. This compilation was released online as a warm-up for what was probably the
last ever GrooveMonsteR show at Hydrant in Brighton on the 22nd August 2010, with support from my band Funeral Hag. If you like them, a video of the show and a mockumentary about GrooveMonsteR are currently in production, see the GrooveMonsteR Reunion Facebook group for details. There are also live recordings of both sets which may or may not be released to the internets at some point...

Here's a video I took of them playing Drunken Master:



320Kbps MP3 via HTTP from Megaupload
WAV (CD Quality) via HTTP from Megaupload

GrooveMonsteR on Myspace
GrooveMonsteR Reunion Facebook Group

Wiht - Wiht

Wiht are an instrumental stoner doom band from Leeds in the UK. Whilst somewhat reminiscent of other instrumental stoner bands like Karma To Burn and Sons Of Alpha Centauri, Wiht's sound is quite a bit heavier than either of those and more doomy in pace. Their material works well as instrumental, with a massive guitar tone that must have taken a lot of layers to create. It's not all heavy grooves, there are some nice chilled out droney and almost ambient sections. Well worth a listen, and as always if you like it go buy it! £4 on CD from their Myspazz, not bad for >40 minutes of kickass stoner doom.

256Kbps MP3 via HTTP from Mediafire.com
http://www.mediafire.com/?gqzrghymtor
http://www.mediafire.com/?uzznd1jjh2j

Wiht on Myspace

Mother Susurrus - Mother Susurrus

Mother Susurrus are a doom/sludge band from Finland. Their sound is quite droney and sludgey, heavy yet with plenty of melody as well. Beautifully bleak and very well crafted, the EP rises and falls like post rock but never quite drops below a doomy level of heaviness and sludge. There are no clean guitars here! This EP consists of 2 tracks, Whoremonger and Apocatastasis, totalling 32:26 of awesome doominess.

VBR (~250Kbps) MP3 via HTTP from Mothersusurrus.com
FLAC via HTTP from Mothersusurrus.com
ALAC via HTTP from Mothersusurrus.com

Mother Susurrus on Myspace
Mother Susurrus offical website

Hesper Payne - Unclean Rituals

Hesper Payne are a Lovecraft inspired doom band from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the UK. I posted their Titans Of The North Sea EP a while ago, which was rather good. Now they're back with a new album, Unclean Rituals, which continues with their awesome brand of bleak, detuned doom with death metal style vocals. I liked it so much I had to buy the CD, which came with an ominous note I shall now transcribe for your reading pleasure (punctuation mostly added by me for ease of reading):

Monty!

Oh gods. The horror!
They know where I am. I asked the wrong questions, now I hear their mocking cry, further than the distant starts, closer than the thickness of a shadow. Guard this artifact well lest they come for you.

OH GODS, I HEAR THEM AT THE WINDOW!

HP.

Obviously they've been reading a lot of Lovecraft, which is something I always mean to do. Go check them out!

Various formats including 320Kbps MP3 and FLAC from Bandcamp

Hesper Payne on Myspace
Hesperpayne.com

Beware! The Gelatinous Gloop

Beware! The Gelatinous Gloop is a compilation of doom and sluge metal from Exhilarate Records. There's some great stuff on here, including tracks from my band Funeral Hag and fellow Brighton doomsters Enos and Dopefight. The download is split into two parts, so make sure you grab both so you get all 22 bands and 2 hours 25 minutes of doom!

Tracklist as follows:

Part 1 – Tracks 1-11

01. Ophis ‘The Halls of Sorrow’
02. Hiram ‘Peering Over the Shoulder of Admiral Piri-Reis’
03. The Machete Massacre ‘Kingdom of Sin’
04. Bitterdusk ‘Amanecer De La Galaxi’
05. Fall of Empyrean ‘In the Shadows of the Sun’
06. Funeral Hag ‘Nellie Longarms’
07. Zatokrev ‘Story of a Thousand’
08. Enos ‘Back to Earth’
09. Grief’s Exquisite Veil ‘Sleep’s Caress’
10. Hopkins ‘Permutations’
11. Dopefight ‘Nob.Nod.Noi’

Part 2 – Tracks 12-22

12. Sobre Nocturne ‘Shattered Fields’
13. Tovarish ‘Laika’
14. Blame Keiko ‘Everything & Nothing’
15. The Way of Purity ‘Sinner’
16. Circus of Damnation ‘In Speciem Cadaveris’
17. Plaguewitch ‘Aarka’
18. John Halifax ‘Robust’
19. Merciless Precision ‘Suffer (live at the Zeneth)’
20. Normalman ‘Flamingo Land’
21. Drug Honkey ‘The Others’
22. Brown & Benbow ‘Dog Waste’

Various bitrates MP3 download via HTTP from Mediafire
Part 1
Part 2

Exhilarate Records Blogspot

Enos - Chapter 1

Right, not done an update for ages because I'm a massive twat! I have amassed quite a collection of links for you however, so I shall endeavour to keep the updates reasonably regular in future. After all, anyone who's loyal enough a reader to still be reading is bound to be itching for a fix of new free music by now!

This time I shall be shamelessly promoting my mates' band's album! Enos are a Brighton doom band mixing elements of doom, stoner, prog and space rock. Their first album was a long time in the making and mixing drove their front-man to despair. Fortunately for us he persevered and we get served up these 5 tracks of psychedelic doom for free! There's also a great comic book as a PDF with the album, which some of you may recognise from one of Chris' other projects Thee Big Black, a Brighton based fanzine, webzine, forum and promotions group for all things stoner, doom, drone, sludge and anything else somone feels like contributing. Well worth a read/listen so check 'em out!

320Kbps MP3 via HTTP from theebigblack.com

Enos on Myspace

Matsudo - With Amplifiers Zions Nothingness Eventually Rises

Matsudo are a doom/sludge band from Sweden. I don't know a lot about them, but it seems they rate Sabazius so they are obviously men of great taste! It also seems they've split up, annoying as I hadn't really heard much from them before. Their stuff is slow and heavy, with some quiet droney interludes, but overall doomy as fuck. Check it out!

160Kbps MP3 via HTTP from Mediafire.com


Matsudo on Myspace

Earthtone9 - Inside Embers Glow... A Collection Of Earthtone9's Aural Communiqués 1998 - 2002

I don't really remember Earthtone9 from back in the day, but it seems they were most influential on various people I know. I remember them being around and written about in Kerrang and Metal Hammer, think I met someone whose brother was in the band at a party or something once, but I don't know that I ever actually listened to them. My main exposure to them has been because their singer is in one of my favourite Brighton bands, Blackstorm. Anyways, it seems they have reformed and released this best-of compilation for you to download for free. I downloaded it, of course, and it's actually pretty good. A mix of hardcore and nu-metal, nothing too technical but solid rhythms and nice melody. Shame the vocals just make me wish it was Blackstorm!

192Kbps MP3 via HTTP from Earthone9.co.uk (you'll have to enter an email address for the link)

Earthtone9 on Myspace
Earthtone9 official website

Talbot - Eos

Here's another mighty slab of doom from Estonian 2-piece Talbot. This is their first full-length release, and it certainly shows they can keep up the doom for much longer than demonstrated on their previous Tundra EP (which I posted just over a year ago). I liked Tundra so much I bought the CD-R version off the band, which features remixes of 2 tracks not found on the download only version. EOS is even better than Tundra, plenty of monolithic heaviness and also some nice psychedelic interludes. Well worth a listen so go download it!

MP3 @ 192Kbps via HTTP from talbot-music.com

Talbot on Myspace
Talbot Official website

Hiram - If Up Were Along

Not done an update for a while, so here's a quick one because this album is awesome and I need to stop being so lazy.

Today's offering is an album called If Up Were Along by Hiram from Sheffield, UK. There's something about the north that seems to breed good doom bands, I guess it's the whole bleak northern vibe, not that we southerners can't compete (or at least I'd like to think we can, what with me being in a doomy metal band).

If Up Were Along is pretty epic, a 2 disc affair at over 1 hour 30 minutes. It starts off with a clean/acousticy intro with some weird noises but soon gets down to its doomy business, with a sound that's reminiscent of Black Sheep Wall if they hadn't listened to quite so much Meshuggah! The whole album is a nice mix of doom and heavy post rock, with some nice melodic passages but enough heaviness and screaming to keep a metaller like me happy as well.

192Kbps or 320Kbps MP3s via HTTP from Mediafire

Hiram on Myspace