“Hey Columbia, who is Tim Curry?”
Well this one is really devastating. Losing Dolly Parton yesterday was a real punch in the gut, to be sure, but Tim Curry has been a huge part of my life, for as long as I can remember.
Checked your email first thing in the morning and already got 100+ unread messages blowing up your inbox? Yup, must be Bandcamp Friday again!
I’ve been out of action for a short while — lotta work crap taking up way too much of my time, mostly — but I’m still here, still sharing the good word about new musical discoveries. Which unfortunately is more than can be said about a large number of other folks these days: have you heard about this bullshit?
Imagine I went to the trouble to seek out the Ron Burgundy meme and added the text “Capitalism was a bad idea!” and inserted the image here.
Friends, in a conversation with some fellow music appreciators-slash-journalists about recent new releases, I offered the opinion that 2026 has thus far been one hell of a year for sludge metal.
As further evidence, I’d like to present you with this, the fourth album of filty, dirty sludgecore by Portland (Oregon)’s Armed for Apocalypse, which just came out today. As the band describe themselves: “They just play crushing songs that go from slow to slower, from muck to mire, from mosh to circle-pit. And sometimes they’ll make a left turn and end up at epic. Simply put, it’s rock ‘n’ roll music tuned way down and pissed way off.”
For an added bonus, today we’re also going to check out the debut EP, which came out almost exactly one year ago, by Dutch sludge/post-hardcore/noise duo Swerve. Their bio is far more succinct, but no less accurate: “Two guys, big noise.”
There’s that word again: “Heavy.”
Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth’s gravitational pull?
That’s right, folks, I’ve got some more music for you to check out, and it’s gonna be heavy. HEAVY. Like multiple metric fucktons of heavy. Just letting you know in advance so you’re prepared.
Good afternoon, y’all.
As you may recall, I’ve talked a time or two about the benefits of following bands and labels on Bandcamp. Here’s another argument in favor of that practice: that’s how I found out about Druid Stone, a sorta-experimental doom project from Virginia: because I got the notification from Fiadh Produtions almost six months ago when Fiadh put out a cassette version of their 2023 album The Grateful Undead, which I’d like to tell you about today.
Arizonan thrashers Transgressive, on the other hand, I’ve been familiar with for several years, as they sort of roamed in similar leftist metal twitter circles (back when that used to be a thing). So I’d already heard and had already been a fan of their 2023 album Extreme Transgression, but then I happened to get an announcement last month that it also was being given the cassette treatment by Fiadh. So I figured, let’s check that one out today as well.
Hello, Party People!
I was going to mention something in this article’s salutation about hoping you are having a happy Monday, but then I got thinking about how it seems like I use that phrase fairly frequently. As it turns out based on a quick search, fifteen times (not including today) in total, or an average of slightly more often than once per year.
So I guess it isn’t really THAT much, actually, but it does seem a bit irksome that zero of the fifteen times involved any reference to the Madchester band of the same name, and a bit disingenuous that zero of the fifteen times have actually involved anyone having a happy Monday.
But at the very least, we can hope for a Monday that is less awful than it might otherwise have been? And to that end, I present you with a pair of albums. Both by sludge metal bands from northern Italy (specifically, from Bergamo and Parma, approximately 160-something kilometers apart, or 100-ish miles), and both released by the Dusktone label (one exactly one month ago today, the other roughly fourteen months ago).
Enjoy!
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.
Hey there, friends. Gotta say, I’ve really been on the struggle bus this week. This whole month, in fact. Maybe some of you can relate? Hopefully not. But please feel free to say hi in the comments below, or drop by Bluesky with some words of encouragement!
Anyway, let’s dive right into it. Today we’ve got a brand-new album of bleak black-doom from Mexico (coming out this Friday!) and a bonus serving of Italian bleak death-doom-sludge (from about six months ago)…
Olhava, Olhava, Olhava. That’s the theme of the day.
For those who perhaps haven’t been around that long, a quick reminder: the Saint Petersburg (RU) atmospheric-black ensemble’s 2021 album Frozen Bloom (their fourth overall) was reviewed here after Avantgarde Music handled the physical release; and it promptly floated its way into the top ten of my list of that year’s best releases.
Since that time, despite all the fucked up stuff that’s been going on in their own country and all around the world, the duo (which includes Tim Yusupov, also of Trna and various other projects, on drums, and Andrey Novozhilov, also of Trna and Remaining Warmth [discussed here] among various others, on guitars and vocals) have managed to put out three more incredible records.
These releases ranked #1 on my lists for 2022 and 2024. The most recent came out about six weeks ago; at this point, just barely more than a quarter into 2026, it’s impossible to say whether this newest record will follow its predecessors in the highest spot, but regardless you can guarantee it’ll be pretty damn close to it at the very least.
In this post we will take a quick spin through all three.
Hey there, friends. Hope you’re having a good Friday.
Nah, wait, Good Friday was last week. Hope you’re having a GREAT Friday!
I’d like to share something with you that’s just being released today — an album by single-member band Seattleite Laden which I recently discovered through the Metal Bandcamp Gift Club.
For those who may not be familiar, MBGC is essentially a mailing list — which has gone through various incarnations over the years but currently hosted on Substack — where you can share your birthday and your Bandcamp wish list, and every day (well, most days) a message goes out to let everyone know whose birthday it is that day, and a link to their wish list.
It’s a great way to give and receive the gift of music, to support independent artists, and also a great way to discover new suggested stuff to listen to: if you see someone’s list and you think, hey I like a bunch of these bands, chances are you may want to check out some of the other stuff on their list.
Speaking of which, I thought it would be fun to discuss this brand-new album alongside the most recent release from a band of Londoners who Laden have cited as one of their influences: Wren — an album which happened to sneak its way into my list of favorites from last year.
Valley of Steel 