Part of Shadow Kingdom Records‘ “Let’s See How Much Awesome Crap We Can Reissue” Project (I’m pretty sure that’s what it’s called), this unearthing of Asylum‘s The Earth is the Insane Asylum of the Universe demo couldn’t have arrived at a better time. It seems these days that more and more American retro doom bands (see The Gates of Slumber, Apostle of Solitude, etc.) are trying with varying degrees of success to sound just like these Maryland gents did back in 1985. It’s refreshing every now and then to hear the real deal.

That’s what’s on offer with this demo (doomo?); true Sabbathian doom, impeccably played and with a flair for speedier Mot?rhead-style antics shown on “Moment of Truth” and the following, newly-included “Moment of Truth II.” The band that would later become Unorthodox, just at their beginnings here, skillfully meld a “Heaven and Hell” bass line with an epic Led Zeppelin guitar riff on “Bell Witch (Red Skull),” while Dale Flood‘s vocals slur their way out with an early-metallic fuck-all that I’m quite sure made some high school principal very angry on the days Flood chose to show up. Certainly his boys room smoking couldn’t have been as out of hand as the soloing on that song.

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Speaking of Blabbermouth, check this out:

Acclaimed West Virginia instrumental heavy rockers Karma to Burn have put their differences aside and reformed for a limited series of dates. Karma to Burn split in 2002 after bassist Rich Mullins left to join Texas aggro-rockers Speedealer.

Shows kick off April 16 at the Sound Factory in Charleston, WV with Karma to Burn as main support for Unknown Hinson. Headlining shows will follow in Huntington, WV with local doomsters Hyatari and Columbus with Sin Nombre. More gigs will be announced soon, including possible European dates.

Karma to Burn consists of guitarist Will Mecum (Treasure Cat), bassist Rich “Dickie” Mullins (Year Long Disaster) and drummer Rob Oswald (Nebula).

Boy, it’s a good thing they decided to get this band going again. Year Long Disaster was kind of rough to take.

Karma to Burn on MySpace

Granted, if this was Blabbermouth, 50th post wouldn’t be anything to brag about, but this site has been up less than a month, has already been accessed over 2,400 times (and no, that doesn’t count my hits) and already reached this mini-milestone. Thanks for reading and spreading the word.

A couple days ago, I sent Birds of Prey vocalist Ben Hogg (also of Beaten Back to Pure and the even more extreme Plague the Suffering) an email, asking him if he would kindly write up a feature on his experience making The Hellpreacher, the third BOP album, due out in April via Relapse. His response was a reassuring, “I’m down. Gimme a few days,” and I knew then the right choice had been made.

True to his word, a couple days later, Ben sent the following report on the origins of the band and the coming together of The Hellpreacher. After the jump, bear witness to the one and only Ben Hogg.

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Holy crap, I need a break from reviews. Too much thinking equals sleepy in the brain. Here’s a Melvins video from a show I could have gone to but decided to stay in my hotel and watch Wayne’s World 2 on Comedy Central instead. I’m by no means the biggest Big Business fan in the world, but you get what you pay for.

I’ve sat with the new VALIS record, Dark Matter (Small Stone) for a couple days now, ever since I posted the mp3 of opener “Resurrection Sickness” a little while ago, and the only two words I keep going back to for it are “catchy” and “stoned.” Guitarist/vocalist Van Conner, once bassist for Screaming Trees, has outdone himself in stripping away a lot of the spaced-out confusion that pervaded past Small Stone albums, 2004’s Head Full of Pills and the next year’s Champions of Magic, and where those albums had a hazy, heady, tripped out feel, Dark Matter is much closer to the ground — “closer” being the key word there.

Since each track on the album has a remarkably distinct personality, the best way to analyze Dark Matter seems to be one song at a time:

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It’s quite a ways to go from the self-titled Demon Cleaner album’s good-timey rocking Kyuss groove to Vaka‘s Kappa Delta Phi, but considering it took Karl Daniel Lid?n seven years to make the leap from playing drums on the one to doing everything on the other including producing and mixing, the stylistic shift at least has some context. With Vaka, Lid?n tackles a heavy post-metal aesthetic with a unique, piano-laden approach to what’s become a style flooded with mediocre bands.

That said, a Neurosis comparison isn’t necessarily inappropriate, and there are some Enemy Of The Sun-isms present for sure, but the brand of crushingly atmospheric experimentalism Vaka emit strikes even more like a hyper-realized version of Enslaved offshoot Trinacria, who released their Travel Now Journey Infinitely debut last year. There is a weighty darkness to the music that strikes as pure Scandinavian, rather than born out of US hard/metalcore as so many other post-metal acts are. Sounds more like itself, in other words. Not a bad thing.

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When it comes to doom riffs, speaking mathematically, the scale goes like this: Tony Iommi > Leif Edling > Everyone Else All The Time Ever. As bassist and main songwriter for Swedish lords Candlemass (not to mention being known as having one the world’s most extensive collections of Black Sabbath records and memorabilia), Edling has been responsible for some of the greatest underground doom anthems of all time. Songs like “Under the Oak,” “Solitude,” “Demon’s Gate,” “A Sorcerer’s Pledge” — and that’s just on 1986’s Epicus Doomicus Metallicus! The guy’s got a whole catalog like that (soon to include Death Magic Doom, highly anticipated in the valley and due later this year), not to mention the work he’s done with Krux alongside singer Mats Lev?n (ex-Therion), who nearly took Messiah Marcolin‘s place in Candlemass following that singer’s alleged trip off the deep end.

Songs of Torment, Songs of Joy (Candlelight/GMR) is Leif Edling‘s first true solo offering following the collection of Candlemass demos released under his name in 2002, The Black Heart of Candlemass. And that is precisely what Edling has always been; the life force pumping the blood below the surface of that band, while others reap the notoriety and bask in the limelight.

That is perhaps all the more confirmed by the fact that, though it wouldn’t necessarily be surprising if for his solo album Edling chose to go in a completely different musical direction (? la Abstrakt Algebra, the power metal band he took on following Candlemass‘ original breakup after 1999’s From the 13th Sun), he decided to make an effort of pure doom and release it in his name. This is Leif Edling. He is doom.

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