Reveal! - Doppelherz (2021)

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Here's an album that is absolutely refusing to be pigeon-holed by arm-chair bloggers and critics alike, a giant fuck you to those of us who feel a compulsion to tie everything down with one of our genre packages—Sweden's Reveal! are one of the rare groups impure and brazen enough to traverse a rarely contested musical swath of influences running the gamut of everything declared under the banner of "Extreme Metal".

Doppelherz is a colourful mosaic of sounds both old and new, borrowed and invented, frenetic and calculated.—Throughout its entirety, creaky cathedral chords reminiscent of Negative Plane and Funereal Presence can be heard, which is not entirely uncommon, but definitely dubious when it's pressed up against something that sounds like early speed/heavy metal a la Mercyful Fate or disoriented black metal and thrash riffs in the vein of Obliteration or Spirit Possession… But somehow these guys fucking pull it off with gusto!

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I'll spare the multitude of comparisons and say this, it feels like this record shouldn't work. Like there's a little too much going on and too many things being pulled and implemented for it to even feel cohesive, but there's just enough structure and swagger to make it work. And I'll be the first to admit, not having this album in my last years top albums of 2021 was an impermissible misstep, but as it usually goes with very late releases in the year, I overlooked and under-appreciated Doppelherz when it dropped mid December.

Reveal! - Doppelherz (bandcamp)

Ladybird - Demo 2012

Just in case you were having a good day I give you Ladybird's 2012 demo, which will reach into your heart and shit down your soul with its heavier than a dump-truck full of dead baby's doooooom.
Why of course it's reefer encrusted, it seems as though getting high and doom metal are the best of friends.

Drenched in reverb with riffs that groove and thunder lazily through a chasm of molasses paced drone … a big 'fuck you' to a polished aesthetic proudly adorns each track! It's beautiful, like the inside of a toilet bowl at your local Wal-Mart. It's sloppy because it wants to be, it's unrefined because fuck you, and it shits on everything because it can.

Download (name your price, even if it's $00.00 asshole)

Hour of 13 - Hour of 13 (2007)

Hour of 13, brilliant. Dripping with sabbath worship aiming to create doom with a toss in of upbeat heavy metal riffs. Throw in respected elements of Mercyful Fate and Judas Priest for good measure. Everything was actually recorded in a old stone church that had been restored in the 1930's into a studio, cathedral ceilings and all. Blaspheming decadence.

Lyrics from 'Call to Satan";

Light the candles in thirteen
At each side than in between
In the circle here I stand
Naked in wait in the pentagram
With sacred blade self mutilate
To my own wounds I masturbate
In a sweat and semen soaked
Surrounded haze of incense smoke
An offering whose bowels be let
It's carcass placed on chantry set
In spoken tongues the songs I sing
Along with these solemn bells to ring
...king of the dark in everything

The atmosphere, vocal melodies and overall song writing set them aside from said worships giving them an entirely unique sound. If you are a fan of your metal so old-school it teeters the balance of a primordial oozed Toxic Crusader, then give this a listen.

Hour of 13