Chapter VIIIBLOOD
Beyond the Electric Caravan
Sabbath, doom, sludge and the long descent into drone metal
Showing all 078 works
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001
I Am Ozzy
Ozzy Osbourne
In his autobiography I Am Ozzy, Osbourne describes his early life in Aston.
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002
Vincebus Eruptum
Blue Cheer
Named in tribute to the band’s favoured type of LSD, they were a gloriously sloppy unit whose cult 1968 debut Vincebus Eruptum was foundational gear on the level of the MC5 and the Stooges in terms of flailing dunderheaded heviosity.
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003
The Occult: A History
Colin Wilson
Novelist Colin Wilson had published his best-selling The Occult: A History in 1971; folk horror masterpieces such as Witchfinder General, The Wicker Man and The Blood on Satan’s Claw all found large audiences, as did magazines like Man, Myth & Magic.
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004
Witchfinder General
Michael Reeves
Novelist Colin Wilson had published his best-selling The Occult: A History in 1971; folk horror masterpieces such as Witchfinder General, The Wicker Man and The Blood on Satan’s Claw all found large audiences, as did magazines like Man, Myth & Magic.
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005
The Wicker Man
Robin Hardy
Novelist Colin Wilson had published his best-selling The Occult: A History in 1971; folk horror masterpieces such as Witchfinder General, The Wicker Man and The Blood on Satan’s Claw all found large audiences, as did magazines like Man, Myth & Magic.
Film 1973 Open ↗ IMDb -
006
The Blood on Satan’s Claw
Piers Haggard
Novelist Colin Wilson had published his best-selling The Occult: A History in 1971; folk horror masterpieces such as Witchfinder General, The Wicker Man and The Blood on Satan’s Claw all found large audiences, as did magazines like Man, Myth & Magic.
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007
Children of the Stones
HTV
There were even children’s shows – Children of the Stones – based on pagan folklore.
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008
Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls
Coven
Indeed, they were prefigured in their use of occult imagery by US rockers Coven, who made melodic rock with a distinctly diabolical flavour, releasing their debut Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls in 1969; Arthur Brown had also, of course, declared himself god of hellfire a year previously, while Midlanders Black Widow released the occult-themed Sacrifice in 1971, to say nothing of Jimmy Page’s infamous Aleister Crowley obsession.
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009
Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath
Jazz and blues were thus writ large on Black Sabbath (1970): ‘The Wizard’, ‘Wicked World’ and ‘Behind the Wall of Sleep’, while heavy, display a peculiar jauntiness that – title track aside – defines Sabbath’s debut.
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010
Paranoid
Black Sabbath
Iommi’s bludgeoning tone was felt to serious effect on Sabbath’s follow up Paranoid (1970).
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011
Master of Reality
Black Sabbath
If the genesis for traditional heavy metal is found in Black Sabbath and Paranoid – the frenetic chug of the title song foreseeing the brittle energy of the new wave of British heavy metal (NWOBHM) explosion of the late 1970s – then Sabbath’s next record Master of Reality (1971) remains the blueprint for doom to this day.
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012
Vol. 4
Black Sabbath
Sabbath followed Master of Reality with a strong trio: Vol. 4 (1972) was a more polished set, recorded in LA and fuelled by heinous quantities of cocaine; Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973) saw them experimenting with synths and strings while Sabotage (1975) was an angry record driven by legal hassles.
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013
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Black Sabbath
Sabbath followed Master of Reality with a strong trio: Vol. 4 (1972) was a more polished set, recorded in LA and fuelled by heinous quantities of cocaine; Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973) saw them experimenting with synths and strings while Sabotage (1975) was an angry record driven by legal hassles.
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014
Sabotage
Black Sabbath
Sabbath followed Master of Reality with a strong trio: Vol. 4 (1972) was a more polished set, recorded in LA and fuelled by heinous quantities of cocaine; Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973) saw them experimenting with synths and strings while Sabotage (1975) was an angry record driven by legal hassles.
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015
Technical Ecstasy
Black Sabbath
Technical Ecstasy (1976) was forgettable.
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016
Never Say Die
Black Sabbath
By the time the ponderous Never Say Die (1978) sounded the death knell for the original line-up, the raw dread and lumbering groove of their early records was entirely absent – not only from Sabbath, but from the wider musical landscape.
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017
Pentagram
Pentagram
In the mid 1980s, while thrash and hair metal raged to greater commercial success, bands like Saint Vitus, Pentagram, Trouble, Witchfinder General and Candlemass hunkered down, making bizarre records charged with negative energy; succubus talisman to eclipsed hope that fitted nowhere and were all the more powerful for it.
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018
Master of Puppets
Metallica
It was physically heavier than traditional metal: while thrash was all pimply aggression and thrusting velocity, its principal documents – Metallica’s Master of Puppets, say – were thin and trebly.
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019
Death Penalty
Witchfinder General
Both debut LP Death Penalty (1981) and follow-up Friends of Hell (1983) are highly collectable, though crude, affairs.
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020
Friends of Hell
Witchfinder General
Both debut LP Death Penalty (1981) and follow-up Friends of Hell (1983) are highly collectable, though crude, affairs.
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021
Epicus Doomicus Metallicus
Candlemass
Sweden’s Candlemass, meanwhile, pioneered epic doom with their aptly titled Epicus Doomicus Metallicus (1986) doing precisely what it said on the tin: a foundational record that hinged on technical prowess, operatic vocals and dynamic peaks.
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022
Last Days Here
Don Argott & Demian Fenton
They were plagued by black luck – 2012’s Last Days Here documentary, following Liebling from the throes of crippling crack and heroin addiction to recovery and tour, is one of the most harrowing music documentaries ever made – and line-up changes from the start, their story one of strife, missed opportunities, drugs and despair.
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023
Psalm 9
Trouble
Trouble was the most ‘classicist’ of the three, first LP Psalm 9 providing down-tuned riffs and foreboding atmospherics alongside a technical tightness often lacking in doom.
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024
Forest of Equilibrium
Cathedral
Cathedral’s seminal Forest of Equilibrium (1991) was a lyrically opulent case in point.
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025
Scum
Napalm Death
Reducing hardcore to a flailing, roiling essence, albums like Scum (1987) and From Enslavement to Obliteration were an exercise in wild speed and aggressive extremity.
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026
From Enslavement to Obliteration
Napalm Death
Reducing hardcore to a flailing, roiling essence, albums like Scum (1987) and From Enslavement to Obliteration were an exercise in wild speed and aggressive extremity.
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027
The Ethereal Mirror
Cathedral
Delving into groovier, more psychedelic territory, second album The Ethereal Mirror (1993) was a markedly less extreme proposition than their debut.
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028
The Carnival Bizarre
Cathedral
The Carnival Bizarre (1995) was groovier still, including a cameo from Tony Iommi on the ludicrously propulsive ‘Utopian Blaster’ while ‘Hopkins (Witchfinder General)’ was an outrageously camp paean to the murderous fervour of the song’s namesake seventeenth-century zealot, a monstrous smoking groove.
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029
Dark Passages
Rise Above Records
Just as Rise Above had codified the doom scene with their Dark Passages compilation in 1991, so Roadrunner Records’ 1997 Burn One Up: Music for Stoners compilation shone a light on bands like the aforementioned, alongside cuts from Queens of the Stone Age, Acrimony, Sleep, Cathedral and the Heads.
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Burn One Up: Music for Stoners
Roadrunner Records
Just as Rise Above had codified the doom scene with their Dark Passages compilation in 1991, so Roadrunner Records’ 1997 Burn One Up: Music for Stoners compilation shone a light on bands like the aforementioned, alongside cuts from Queens of the Stone Age, Acrimony, Sleep, Cathedral and the Heads.
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031
The Big Lebowski
Joel & Ethan Coen
Good-times music, The Big Lebowski made sonic flesh.
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032
Vol 1
Sleep
Formed in early-nineties San Jose by bassist and vocalist Al Cisneros alongside drummer Chris Hakius and guitarist Matt Pike, they recorded a demo – Vol 1 (1991) – before recording another album-length tape that they sent to Earache Records.
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033
Sleep’s Holy Mountain
Sleep
The resulting album – Sleep’s Holy Mountain (1992) – marked a pivotal milestone in the genesis of stoner rock.
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034
Dopesmoker
Sleep
The resulting album – Dopesmoker – comprised a single fifty-five-minute song based around a single circling riff that unfolds, breaks down and builds, time and again.
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035
Jerusalem
Sleep
A version of Dopesmoker eventually surfaced in 1999 (as Jerusalem, on Rise Above) and the mystic atmosphere that surrounded Sleep’s bizarre opus grew by word of mouth throughout the noughties.
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036
The Sciences
Sleep
Sleep reformed in 2009 for a pair of triumphant shows at ATP festival and have toured sporadically ever since before surprise-releasing a new album – The Sciences – in 2018.
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037
Come My Fanatics …
Electric Wizard
Second album Come My Fanatics … (1996) was another story.
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038
Beneath the Planet of the Apes
Ted Post
The song ends with the haunting closing quote from Beneath the Planet of the Apes ‘In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead.’ Escape took a practical form, too.
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039
Dopethrone
Electric Wizard
If Come My Fanatics … saw Electric Wizard exploring cosmic apocalypse, Dopethrone (2000) went further into the escape from modernity that Oborn mentions; and into their personal mythos.
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040
Witchcult Today
Electric Wizard
‘Venus in Furs’ (from 2010’s Black Masses) was a paean to the Jess Franco movie, and finds Oborn riffing on that classic doom trope – ‘the evil woman’ – in all her leather-clad glory; ‘Living Dead of the Manchester Morgue’ was based on the bleak, rain-soaked 1974 zombie movie of the same name; ‘Dunwich’ (from 2007’s Witchcult Today) takes lyrical inspiration from The Dunwich Horror, the darkly psychedelic 1970 update of the classic Lovecraftian tale of ritual and summoning.
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041
Black Masses
Electric Wizard
‘Venus in Furs’ (from 2010’s Black Masses) was a paean to the Jess Franco movie, and finds Oborn riffing on that classic doom trope – ‘the evil woman’ – in all her leather-clad glory; ‘Living Dead of the Manchester Morgue’ was based on the bleak, rain-soaked 1974 zombie movie of the same name; ‘Dunwich’ (from 2007’s Witchcult Today) takes lyrical inspiration from The Dunwich Horror, the darkly psychedelic 1970 update of the classic Lovecraftian tale of ritual and summoning.
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042
Let Us Prey
Electric Wizard
After Dopethrone, the original line-up recorded one last album together – the criminally underrated, churning dirge of Let Us Prey – before guitarist Liz Buckingham joined on We Live.
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043
We Live
Electric Wizard
After Dopethrone, the original line-up recorded one last album together – the criminally underrated, churning dirge of Let Us Prey – before guitarist Liz Buckingham joined on We Live.
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044
Time to Die
Electric Wizard
Time to Die (2014) was sheer suicidal despair, a clarion call to the black dog.
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045
Wizard Bloody Wizard
Electric Wizard
2016’s Wizard Bloody Wizard was – by Wizard terms – disconcertingly upbeat.
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046
Bullhead
Melvins
Inhabiting a surreal suburban vista as viewed through hazy bong water, at their best – as on Bullhead (1991) or Lysol (1992) – they’re weighty to the point of absurdity.
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047
Lysol
Melvins
Inhabiting a surreal suburban vista as viewed through hazy bong water, at their best – as on Bullhead (1991) or Lysol (1992) – they’re weighty to the point of absurdity.
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048
Gluey Porch Treatments
Melvins
Propelled by monotonous riffs and an elephantine groove, the Melvins’ debut – Gluey Porch Treatments (1987) – was a lumbering beast that hit the sweet spot between the time-stretched sonic tar of Flipper and the swaggering absurdity of stadium rock dynamics filtered through a bottle of codeine cough syrup.
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049
Ozma
Melvins
Second album Ozma (1989) amped the dronal underbelly, hinging on nightmarishly rendered slow-motion riffs and a lyrical third eye tuned to the vagaries of American suburbia.
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050
Houdini
Melvins
Signing with Atlantic Records in 1993, they released Houdini in the same year.
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051
Stoner Witch
Melvins
The Melvins released two more records with Atlantic – Stoner Witch (1994) and Stag (1996), signed to experimental noise mainstays Amphetamine Reptile for an album of chaotic electronic noise – Prick (1994) – and then to Mike Patton’s Ipecac Records for a welter of noisy avant-garde-leaning material including the notorious Throbbing Gristle-esque squalling electronic noisefest The Colossus of Destiny (2001).
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052
Prick
Melvins
The Melvins released two more records with Atlantic – Stoner Witch (1994) and Stag (1996), signed to experimental noise mainstays Amphetamine Reptile for an album of chaotic electronic noise – Prick (1994) – and then to Mike Patton’s Ipecac Records for a welter of noisy avant-garde-leaning material including the notorious Throbbing Gristle-esque squalling electronic noisefest The Colossus of Destiny (2001).
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053
Stag
Melvins
The Melvins released two more records with Atlantic – Stoner Witch (1994) and Stag (1996), signed to experimental noise mainstays Amphetamine Reptile for an album of chaotic electronic noise – Prick (1994) – and then to Mike Patton’s Ipecac Records for a welter of noisy avant-garde-leaning material including the notorious Throbbing Gristle-esque squalling electronic noisefest The Colossus of Destiny (2001).
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054
The Colossus of Destiny
Melvins
The Melvins released two more records with Atlantic – Stoner Witch (1994) and Stag (1996), signed to experimental noise mainstays Amphetamine Reptile for an album of chaotic electronic noise – Prick (1994) – and then to Mike Patton’s Ipecac Records for a welter of noisy avant-garde-leaning material including the notorious Throbbing Gristle-esque squalling electronic noisefest The Colossus of Destiny (2001).
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055
Earth 2: Special Low-Frequency Version
Earth
A magisterial wall of sound – as opulent as it was foreboding – 1993’s Earth 2: Special Low-Frequency Version was the culmination of two years’ refinement of process.
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056
No Pussyfooting
Fripp & Eno
Then the other big thing was King Crimson and from that I found No Pussyfooting (1973) by Fripp and Eno, although it was the second one they did – Evening Star (1975) – that I was most into, although it seemed to get totally ignored (laughs).
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057
Evening Star
Fripp & Eno
Then the other big thing was King Crimson and from that I found No Pussyfooting (1973) by Fripp and Eno, although it was the second one they did – Evening Star (1975) – that I was most into, although it seemed to get totally ignored (laughs).
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058
Phase 3: Thrones and Dominions
Earth
Following up with underwhelming Phase 3: Thrones and Dominions (1995) – a rawer vibe, shorter songs, made at the height of Carlson’s crippling drug addiction, and a record that very nearly didn’t get finished at all – Earth’s next LP, Pentastar: In the Style of Demons (1996) was more considered and dramatic, and featured Carlson’s vocals for the first time, although its release signalled a decade-long absence from music as legal hassles and serious drug issues took their toll.
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059
Pentastar: In the Style of Demons
Earth
Following up with underwhelming Phase 3: Thrones and Dominions (1995) – a rawer vibe, shorter songs, made at the height of Carlson’s crippling drug addiction, and a record that very nearly didn’t get finished at all – Earth’s next LP, Pentastar: In the Style of Demons (1996) was more considered and dramatic, and featured Carlson’s vocals for the first time, although its release signalled a decade-long absence from music as legal hassles and serious drug issues took their toll.
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060
Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method
Earth
Reconvening in 2005 with new drummer Adrienne Davis on the bluesy, understated Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method – a record Carlson has stated was strongly influenced by Cormac McCarthy’s hallucinatory, ultra-violent western novel Blood Meridian – Earth’s second phase has seen Carlson embrace a wider sphere of influence, drawing on country, psychedelia and American primitive more than metal.
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061
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy
Reconvening in 2005 with new drummer Adrienne Davis on the bluesy, understated Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method – a record Carlson has stated was strongly influenced by Cormac McCarthy’s hallucinatory, ultra-violent western novel Blood Meridian – Earth’s second phase has seen Carlson embrace a wider sphere of influence, drawing on country, psychedelia and American primitive more than metal.
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062
Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light
Earth
Records like Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light were underpinned by a cinematic, Morricone-esque grandeur that Carlson has made his own: the metal influence is more restrained, Adrienne Davis’s drums a mournful – though devastatingly precise – trudge (playing this slow is, for the drummer incredibly difficult: any misstep can derail the carefully layered vibe, and mistakes are far more obvious than at high tempos); it conjures serious imagery – ancient weather-beaten faces, desolate chapels out on the plains, dustbowls, empty mezcal bottles and cheques cashed in shady saloons in the pitiless heat of the day.
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063
Primitive and Deadly
Earth
Primitive and Deadly (2014) was equally haunted: if Earth 2 was claustrophobia and humidity this was the sound of blood-red earth, loneliness at the edge of the canyon.
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064
Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull
Earth
‘I remember when we were touring the Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull record.
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065
The GrimmRobe Demos
Sunn O)))
The GrimmRobe Demos (2000) was particularly blatant in exultation of Earth: one track was called ‘Defeating: Earth’s Gravity’ another, simply: ‘Dylan Carlson’.
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066
ØØ Void
Sunn O)))
The first three records – The GrimmRobe Demos, ØØ Void (2000) and Flight of the Behemoth (2002) – are suffused with a viscous, untethered vibe.
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067
Flight of the Behemoth
Sunn O)))
The first three records – The GrimmRobe Demos, ØØ Void (2000) and Flight of the Behemoth (2002) – are suffused with a viscous, untethered vibe.
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068
White1
Sunn O)))
White1 (2003) had a notably rootsier feel due to traditional Norwegian folk lyrics sung by ex-Thor’s Hammer vocalist Runhild Gammelsaeter while the bucolically evocative collaboration with arch drudion Julian Cope on ‘My Wall’ – in which he places Anderson and O’Malley at the centre of an ancient sonic mythology and name-checks everywhere from Wansdyke to Silbury Hill in a gloriously, preposterously Copian manner (‘Play your gloom axe, Stephen O’Malley sub bass clinging to the side of the valley’) – is one of their most magical moments.
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069
Black One
Sunn O)))
Black One (2005) is by some distance the bleakest record in their discography, talking directly to the pair’s longstanding love of black metal, with a notable collaboration with Malefic who recorded his inhuman vocals from inside a coffin for extra malevolent atmosphere, while 2009’s Monoliths & Dimensions displayed next-level subtlety and shade.
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070
Monoliths & Dimensions
Sunn O)))
Black One (2005) is by some distance the bleakest record in their discography, talking directly to the pair’s longstanding love of black metal, with a notable collaboration with Malefic who recorded his inhuman vocals from inside a coffin for extra malevolent atmosphere, while 2009’s Monoliths & Dimensions displayed next-level subtlety and shade.
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071
The Iron Soul of Nothing
Nurse with Wound
In 2011 industrial mainstay Nurse with Wound produced a subtle and foreboding set of remixes of Void entitled The Iron Soul of Nothing while in 2014 the pair collaborated with Scott Walker on his Soused LP. It was a rich combination, the density of Anderson and O’Malley’s drone subtle but strident, tempered in the mix just below Walker’s tremulous, dramatic tenor.
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072
Soused
Scott Walker & Sunn O)))
In 2011 industrial mainstay Nurse with Wound produced a subtle and foreboding set of remixes of Void entitled The Iron Soul of Nothing while in 2014 the pair collaborated with Scott Walker on his Soused LP. It was a rich combination, the density of Anderson and O’Malley’s drone subtle but strident, tempered in the mix just below Walker’s tremulous, dramatic tenor.
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073
Bish Bosch
Scott Walker
But despite the rich layering and volume it was originally conceived by Walker as an exercise in reduction – a reaction to the head-spinning complexity of his preceding LP Bish Bosch (2012).
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074
Pain of Mind
Neurosis
Debut LP Pain of Mind (1987) typified the vibe, although there was nothing to suggest the searing intensity that was to come.
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075
The Word as Law
Neurosis
Second album The Word as Law (1990) was more complex, hinging on longer songs, experimental structures and a thicker tone, while Souls at Zero (1992) was predicated on a darker, more hypnotic vibe.
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076
Souls at Zero
Neurosis
Second album The Word as Law (1990) was more complex, hinging on longer songs, experimental structures and a thicker tone, while Souls at Zero (1992) was predicated on a darker, more hypnotic vibe.
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077
Through Silver in Blood
Neurosis
Likewise, 1996’s Through Silver in Blood – generally considered the band’s pinnacle – was sheer primal sonics that leant heavier on the electronics and samples (Von Till is a massive Throbbing Gristle and Godflesh fan) while retaining the core idea of hypnotic primitivism.
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078
Neurosis and Jarboe
Neurosis & Jarboe
Indeed, Swans are the most obvious point of comparison (Neurosis have since worked with ex-Swans vocalist Jarboe on the 2003 Neurosis and Jarboe album) with the volume and face-shaking potentiality of sound of foremost importance.
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Nothing matches
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