Hey folks. Ready to close out the week with some angry French (and/or Franco-Canadien) sludge?

Today I’ve got two brand-new releases for you: one that’s just hot off the presses today, and one that’s so new it won’t actually come out until next week. You’re welcome.

 

A Very Old Ghost Behind the Farm – Canes Gothi ! (Peccata Mundi Records, 17 April 2026)

 

Seum – Parking Life (digital+CD self-released, 23 April 2026 / cassette Falling Apart Records / vinyl Black Throne Productions)

 

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Canes Gothi — apparently Latin for “Goth Dogs”; insert shrug emoji here — is the comeback release from A Very Old Ghost Behind the Farm, French hardcore/sludge band who was fairly active back in the early 2010s, but had pretty much been on have been on hiatus since their 2014 album. According to their recent press release, though, “The old ghost is back from the grave after twelve years of silence.”

The Toulousian quartet waste no time reintroducing themselves, with death-growled vocals and bass-prominent riffs set over a bit of a sludge-n-roll beat on opening track “Vicious Seeds.” A dark, gloomy, doomy vibe hovers over much of the goings-on here, with lyrics that tend toward the supernatural, talking of hauntings and evil manifestations.

Single “Whitemoore’s Fog” (see video below) exemplifies these concepts, featuring dual vocals that are sometimes hardcore shouting and sometimes caustic snarls, and even introducing the sound of funerary bells tolling at one point. Other highlights include “Deceiver” where the death-metal vocals really shine, in sort of an old-school Obituary kind of way; and the closing track “Bleeding Doors” where the creepy-slow doom riffs totally come out in full force.

 

 

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Seum is a French-Canadian band whose name comes from the Arabic word for venom, but which they say is also used as a French slang term “for disappointment and frustration.” The group formed and released two previous albums since the dawn of this decade (so in other words, within the time period that A Very Old Ghost has been inactive).

Next Friday (the 24th), the guitarless trio are dropping their third album Parking Life (please take careful note of that “ing” since it would be a very different album without it), which is their first release to add some clean, melodic vocals “to the downtuned and gnarly bass-only sound the band is known for.”

The album — mastered by Chris Fielding, who has had his hands on numerous Conan releases, this album we just discussed earlier this month, and literally TONS of other great-sounding records — starts off with the especially groovy title track, centered around sampled dialogue where Steve Buscemi encounters a parking attendant in Fargo.

The gritty stoner-sludge groove just keeps going from there; heavy and vicious throughout, but not without a degree of fun: see for example the bouncy stoner-metal bassline that bolsters advance single “Labrador” (see video below) or the playful lyrics in songs such as “Right Swipe Blues.” Their advertised melodic singing notwithstanding, the album nevertheless features plenty of roars and growls — perhaps most prominently when they welcome fellow Québécois Vincent Houde from Dopethrone on the track “666 Problems.”

However, a bit more melodiousness rears its head in the closing track, where the band transforms the classic country ballad “Always on My Mind” into a slimy sludge rendition. Speaking of Dopethrone, this brings to mind the time that band tackled “Ain’t No Sunshine” on their second album — something I was never quite sure how to feel about, to be perfectly honest, since the Bill Withers original was pretty much an absolutely perfect recording and never seemed like something that needed to be redone in any style. Seum‘s cover here feels similarly blasphemous since the Willie Nelson version was in regular rotation in my household growing up (along with a healthy sampling of his discography), but at least in this case it wasn’t originally his song, and it has been recorded by plenty of others, including most famously Elvis and the Pet Shop Boys.

 

 

 

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The Very Old Ghost album is available digitally here or here.

As of this moment of publication, you can find the Seum singles “Sad Labatt” and “Labrador” on their Bandcamp page; once the full album is released it should show up here. You can pre-order the cassette version here or the vinyl here.
 

 

A Very Old Ghost: Bandcamp
Peccata Mundi: Bandcamp | YouTube
 
Seum: website | Bandcamp | YouTube
Falling Apart: Bandcamp
Black Throne: website