REINO ERMITAñO
Rituales Interiores
(I Hate)

HARVEY MILK
Life...The Best Game in Town
(Hydra Head)

CAPILLARY ACTION
So Embarrassing
(Pangaea)

STALINGRAD
S/T
(Self-Released)

SLOW HORSE
Rusher
(Sophomore Lounge)

MAR DE GRISES
Raining the Waterhearts

(Firebox)

BIGELF
Cheat the Gallows 

(Custard)

MORE REVIEWS

I know. I never stop kissing ass of all those small labels still battling for metal in such an adverse musical panorama. I’ll never get tired of it. Especially when they do such a good job packaging the music as if there still were enough of us in the know that music is made and still released in bulk and not by singles only. Now is the turn of England’s Pombagira who are releasing their debut recording The Crooked Path as a double CD. Yes, a fucking double disc!  And to sprinkle the music with enough enticing visuals, The Crooked Path comes with a six page booklet filled with lyrics and suggestive artwork. I know, what’s new with that? Nothing really, but that’s becoming a bit of a rarity these days of digital everything.

Anyway, Pombagira don’t fuck around. They waste no time in taking their time. The first disc packs only three songs in the span of forty-eight minutes.  You do the math while I drink my tea and get my teeth kicked in by the basic as all fuck construction of “Castdown Earthbound”. It is what it is. And what it is is doom at the first grade level. The first song, just like “Defiled Throne”, has got such girth and humongous bottom-feeding sound it’s simply inhuman, headache inducing aural masochism. It’s doom of the most vile kind where the drone-ish tone is almost all that matters and the mean spirited jamming of a tune as the blunt and in your face simple “Defiled Throne” serves to remind you that first grade simplicities pack a wallop better than all the technicality of the metal world.  The vocals are pure agony. Spewed with a seemingly blown throat, vocalist and guitarist Pete does his best to channel excruciating pain.

It’s hard to put doom this strict into context. Frankly, this is so doom I am starting to feel seasick from all those small motions these songs provoke. When the subgenre is played the way Pombagira plays it, the music is so excruciatingly slow it can be rather boring. It rocks so slowly, it’s almost as if it was being moved by vast ocean waters. So it may just be better to take it small doses.

The second disc has two songs and it runs at over thirty-six minutes. Once again, you do the math. The songs are overtly long, and when you take into consideration the simpler than simple approach you realize that sitting through material this long is more of a challenge than anything else.

MySpace                                                                   Buy From Amazon

Contact us: 
editor@deafsparrow.com