From the same fertile and aggressive Vancouver soil from which sprouted stoner metallers Bison B.C. and the crushingly Melvins-esque Mendozza come oppressive sludgekateers Haggatha. The band, who issued their self-titled debut EP in 2009, now follow with the appropriately-dubbed Haggatha II full-length on vinyl through Choking Hazard Records. It’s probably not going to catchy anyone off guard in terms of overall style or affect, but the thickened sound of its seven tracks offers a fuller presentation than most of the sludge-core end of the genre while also shunning much of the “we play really fast and just pretend it’s slow” ethic that seems to typify this generation’s take. Even on the short “These Grey Days,” just 2:37, Haggatha shows a restraint that many of the beardo-abrasion types either can’t or simply refuse to grasp, and Haggatha II is a stronger album for it. Their tactics are certainly familiar, but sometimes you just want sludge to sound like sludge, not black or death metal.

Haggatha II (also referred to as “Second Self-Titled”) opens with the seven-minute “Circle of Salt,” getting its push from quiet guitar lines later echoed in the beginning stages of “Eremozoic” and elsewhere. Braden DeCorby (guitar) and Phil (bass) share vocal duties – though it could just as easily be Terry Weight on bass and vocals; the lineup info is nebulous — lending metallic screams and growls to the sizable riffage of the former and fellow guitarist Trevor Logan. “Gulag” is especially tortured in the throat-area, but the guitars contain suitable drama to add to the affect, and the drums of first-name-only percussionist Matt, who starts off and features on late-album cut “Acquiesce,” have a consistency and professional feel that helps Haggatha II come off as a record to be taken seriously. Cymbals matter. Matt’s interplay with the bass and chugging guitars is huge in filling out the sound of these songs. On second track, “Hogtide,” they practically make the piece on their own – not as blown-out as, say, early Church of Misery, but definitely up front and cutting through the other instrumentation.

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Undoubtedly en route to somewhere as they perpetually seem to be, nomadic duo Jucifer (originally from Georgia) stopped in at Akdar Studios in Bernville, PA, in June 2009 to put the four tracks to tape that would become their portion of a Choking Hazard Records split with Montreal natives Show of Bedlam, for whom the split marks their first outing. Jucifer’s four songs are raw and more aggressive than their Relapse studio material has been over the last couple albums, and Show of Bedlam take traditional doom rock plod and add a modern sense of foreboding to it that comes across through the roughness of their own production.

What the two bands have in common is female vocalists. Jucifer’s Amber Valentine offers Khanate-style screams on rumbling slowed-down opener “Hiroshima,” and settles into a thrashing semi-shout thereafter, where Paulina Richards from Show of Bedlam keeps a more melodic edge to her voice à la Made Out of Babies’ much-lauded singer Julie Christmas, though the music behind her is far less given to experimentation and a track like “Miss Johnny Shirt” is left mostly to Richards to make it stand out. She does, if in a way we’ve heard before. Show of Bedlam’s five tracks are distinguished by their pace and empty feeling – feeling, not sound – and where Jucifer brought distorted chaos and frenzied riffing on the Napalm Death-esque 59-second cut “Good Provider,” the relative stillness of Show of Bedlam closing cut “Doppelganger” feels drawn entirely from a different universe.

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Notable apart from its hour-plus length for being the first recorded output of the post-Bongzilla project Aquilonian, who’ve been threatening for a while now with MySpace samples and teases of the like, this split CD between them and Ohio sludge demons Sollubi (whose previous At War with Decency full-length might just have been victorious in its conflict) is two tracks — one from each band, each over a half-hour long — that seems to create an economy all its own. If you’ve ever thought of buying music in terms of “bang for your buck,” I fail to see a better option than getting two short LP-length offerings from these bands. Most splits feel like throwaway tracks. This feels like home.

Aquilonian go first, which given the built-in interest that will no doubt lead many to check out this split is only proper. The duo of guitarist/vocalist Michael Makela and drummer/vocalist Michael Henry (though neither is particularly busy in the vocal department) have composed “Symphonica de Levita” for the occasion, and with it they put on a master class in how to transpose a groove on top of repetitive riffing. Anyone expecting Bongzilla-type grime will be surprised to find Aquilonian residing in a different, less sludge-laden niche, as though all the stoner in the band was distilled to its essential weedian elements. “Symphonica de Levita” reminds heavily of Sleep’s Holy Mountain, but even more than Makela’s tone or vocals, it’s the drum work of Henry that provokes the association. The ready snare taps that Chris Hakius used to make the best material on that album as memorable as it is, Henry seems apt to employ here, and it works to similar effect. The simplicity of their groove is essential, and even when the track breaks down at about 24 minutes in, it is all the more satisfying when it picks up again to finish with some of its most active guitar/drum interplay.

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Fact: if Sollubi are at war with it, I’m on their side. Even if it’s an intangible concept. I’d advise anyone who didn’t want to get their skull crushed under the force of high-grade disaffected sludge to align his or herself accordingly, because the Pennsylvania/Ohio four-piece belch a 50+ minute, three song hatefest on their full-length debut, At War with Decency (Choking Hazard Records). Stark, drugged and clearly suffering some level of emotional trauma, Sollubi craft songs that, while long, retain their root anger, rather than lose their edge by making some lame attempt at being epic. Combined Eyehategod and Yob? Maybe, if the latter were less cosmic and the former much, much slower.

More than a darkened atmosphere, that on At War with Decency is dirty. Dirty and tired, and the music is an exhausted collapse after some epic relationship-killing argument. Emotionally unfulfilled. Pissed the fuck off. You hear it right away with guitarist Griff‘s frantic work on “In Violation,” which opens the record and is both the fastest and shortest track at 4:34. If “sludge” hadn’t been chosen to describe this kind of music, I’d cast my vote for “grime.” It sounds like there’s a film on my speakers, like grease-covered windows.

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