If you’ve got 66 minutes and a desire to be bludgeoned and flayed at the same time — as really everyone does whether they know it or not — Massachusetts extreme sludgers Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean hereby announce their debut full-length, Obsession Destruction, will be released through Connecticut’s Redscroll Records on May 12. They’re not through 10-minute opener “The Altar” before they’ve built one to weighted-slog duggery, atmosphere not neglected but willfully imbued with a sense of decay that spreads across the 2LP as a defining feature, the record a willful challenge to audience endurance whether doomed in tempo like the penultimate churner “Every Day a Weeping Curse” or, as on the earlier “The Chalice,” able to set their caustic feedback, biting screams and harsh intentions to move at more than a plod.

Those looking for letup should seek elsewhere. Even the three-minute “Hole in My Head” — hit single, anyone? — is driven to churn and pummel. Where there are quiet stretches, as on “The Gates Have Closed and They Will Never Open,” they are both momentary and seething. And as they move deeper into the procession, each of the final two sides has a cut over 12 minutes in “Ten Thousand Years of Unending Failure” and album-closer “In the Feral Grace of Night, May the Last Breath Never Come,” so respite is damned along with just about everything else. In an attempt to bottom line it, there is more depth in tone and craft to Obsession Destruction than the raw misanthropic aggression on its impossibly contorted face might make it appear, but the litmus of consuming, angry misery is stench and sound in kind, cold on the skin like a New England winter night, imbued with a preternatural and abiding threat of dying by exposure.

It was a delight to have been ground into tiny bits last year by Come to Grief‘s When the World Dies, and Obsession Destruction makes a worthy successor; the apocalyptic malevolence that’s overarching throughout the eight component tracks here uniting them fluidly in purpose and intensity. Oh, and it’s really, really heavy too, just in case that point hadn’t gotten across.

Preorders are up as of now ahead of the May 12 arrival, and Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean will advance the album with a string of East Coast and Midwestern tour dates starting April 12 that are also being announced today. All info, links, etc., follows under the player below with the first audio to premiere from Obsession Destruction, courtesy of the band.

Good luck:

Vinyl CS CD preorder – http://redscrollrecords.bigcartel.com/product/pre-order-chained-to-the-bottom-of-the-ocean-obsession-destruction-lp-cd-cs

Bandcamp link – https://chainedtothebottomoftheocean.bandcamp.com/album/obsession-destruction

Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean is a doom metal band based out of Western Massachusetts. Obsession Destruction is the band’s first full-length coming on the heels of 5 sold out releases spotted over the last 5 years. Chained has found a fan-base winning over crowds with unprecedented volume and uncompromising live sound.

Obsession Destruction is an eight song double LP clocking in at over an hour in length, housed in a stunning gatefold LP with artwork created by the late Mariusz Lewandowski (Bell Witch, Obituary, Fuming Mouth). This full length finds the band honing the songwriting and experimentation within their fundamental doom sound and elevating it to the highest caliber possible.

‘Obsession Destruction’ tracklisting:
1. The Altar
2. Summer Comes to Multiply
3. Hole in my Head
4. The Gates Have Closed and they Will Never Open
5. The Chalice
6. Ten Thousand Years of Unending Failure
7. Every Day a Weeping Curse
8. In the Feral Grace of Night, May the Last Breath Never Come

Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean live:
4/12 – New Haven CT @ The State House
4/13 – Sherbrooke QC @ Le Murdoch
4/14 – Toronto ON @ Bar Orwell
4/15 – Grand Rapids MI @ Pux Cider Taphouse
4/16 – South Bend IN @ The Krishna Den
4/17 – St.Louis MO @ The Sinkhole
4/18 – Memphis TN @ Hi Tone
4/19 – Atlanta GA @ The Earl
4/20 – Savannah GA @ Lodge of Sorrows
4/21 – Charlotte NC @ Milestone
4/22 – Richmond VA @ Ipanema Cafe
4/23 – Philadelphia @ Kung Fu Necktie

Recorded by Christ Teti at Silver Bullet Studios
Mastered by Magnus Lindberg
Artwork by Mariusz Lewandowski

Released by Redscroll Records
Redscrollrecords.com

Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean on Facebook

Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean on Instagram

Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean on Bandcamp

Redscroll Records on Facebook

Redscroll Records on Instagram

Redscroll Records store

Sludge extremists Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean are set to release their debut album, Decay and Other Hopes Against Progress Sept. 15 through Howling Frequency Records. Beyond that, the tracklisting and the fact that the band is based in Springfield, Massachusetts, precious little is known about the band or the record, and by “precious little,” I mean basically nothing. Who the band is, how many of them there are, from the lineups of which other of the Bay State’s many extreme pummelers that membership might be drawn, I’ve no idea. There isn’t even a picture to go from. Hence the art above.

But they’re really fucking heavy, really fucking nasty and as is the case with the best of New England’s bands, you can hear the legacy of claustrophobic Puritan paranoia and the changing of the leaves in the opener “Confusion Hath Fuck His Masterpiece” from the record, so at least there’s that to go on. Following in the sludgy methods of masters like Grief, Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean adds formidable and ambience heft to this misanthropic legacy of critique and aural brutality, and while they clearly have a thing for cumbersome titles, their message comes through with cruel efficiency in the key line, “Beware: a fire is coming to blow away your chains.” It is a warning that feels as much about a greater human situation as about the record itself.

I still haven’t heard the full album, so I can’t speak to what the rest of it might have to offer, but along with that anchoring lyric, “Confusion Hath Fuck His Masterpiece” works in two parts, so as you make your way through the premiere below and it cuts to silence at about three and a half minutes into the total 6:44, rest assured, there’s more onslaught to come. Echoing screams, vicious plod and tones of depth enough to earn the band’s moniker pervade, and however much the rest of Decay and Other Hopes Against Progress might follow suit in atmosphere and form, “Confusion Hath Fuck His Masterpiece” makes a terrifying first impression. “Beware: a fire is coming.”

Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean had some comment on the social theme of the song in appropriately strong image, and you’ll find that under the player below, as well as the aforementioned tracklisting and links so you can keep up heading into the Sept. 15 release.

Please enjoy:

Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean on “Confusion Hath Fuck His Masterpiece”:

“The song is about peasant revolts. It’s about putting every king’s head on a pike and getting out from underneath corruption, false leaders, and the failures of government (democratic or not). It’s about the necessary hostile disarming of today’s world powers.”

Tracklisting:
1. Confusion Hath Fuck His Masterpiece
2. The Mutes Have Begun to Speak
3. Four Cubits and a Span
4. The Dead Who Climb Up to the Sky
5. Hollow Feeds the Emptying Death
6. Escape! Harmony is Disclosure

Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean on Thee Facebooks

Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean on Bandcamp

Howling Frequency Records on Thee Facebooks

Howling Frequency Records on Bandcamp