It’s been a really long time since the last time Wino Wednesday was a guest spot track. Since January, actually (unless you count Probot), and that was live, not studio. To help make up for lost time, I thought we’d hear from Hungarian traditional doomers Wall of Sleep, who had Scott “Wino” Weinrich contribute a guitar track on the song “From the Bottom of These Days” from their 2005 outing, Sun Faced Apostles.

Though I more or less permanently mix up Wall of Sleep (who are named for a Sabbath song) with Well of Souls (who are named for a Candlemass song), “From the Bottom of These Days” is nothing if not a standout track, Wino making his presence felt early with a ripping lead to set up the vocal line from Gábor Holdampf (also formerly of Mood) in the verse. The band’s second album, Sun Faced Apostles was released by PsycheDOOMelic, and Wall of Sleep have two records since then, the latest being 2010′s When Mountains Roar on Nail Records.

So while you contemplate playing four albums’ worth of catch-up with Hungary’s trad doom scene, check out “From the Bottom of These Days” below, and as always, have a happy Wino Wednesday:

Traditional doom heathens will recognize the names Gábor Holdampf and Kolos Hegyi, or at least the formidable Hungarian outfits from which they come — Wall of Sleep and Mood. Re-teamed in the four-piece Magma Rise, they follow last year’s Lazy Stream of Steel full-length with the track “Five” on a multi-continental split 7″ with North Carolinian rockers The Asound.

And while we’re talking familiarity, The Asound should ring bells with anyone who stops by this site regularly, since they’ve been reviewed twice now (here and here). It’s seems like a curious pairing at first — a Hungarian doom outfit and American heavy rockers — but both bands make off with some righteous riffery, and The Asound even slow their tempos a bit from their past offerings and match Magma Rise for doomly stomp. Seriously, “The Baron” pretty much marches.

The split is a joint release between Tsuguri and PsycheDOOMelic, and since I have reviewed The Asound twice in the span of 13 months, I thought hosting the tracks for streaming might be time well spent for anyone who hasn’t yet checked them out. If you’ve missed Magma Rise too up till now, you’ll definitely want to hit up “Five” on the player below, as it also rules. Dig it:

The Asound/Magma Rise split is out now in a limited edition of 500 7″ vinyl. Special thanks to Tsuguri Records (website here) and PsycheDOOMelic (website here) for letting me stream the tracks.

Lurking deep within the awfulness that is the new MySpace layout (which I’m convinced they’ve introduced only so they can revert to the original and call it “MySpace Classic”), there’s an instrumental Hungarian rock unit called Urania riffing out odes to deserts so far away they might as well be on the other side of the planet — because they are — and running a gamut of stonerisms from the expansive psychedelia of “Space Coffee” to the nod-worthy low end/reverb interplay of “Bar in Desert.”

I’m always a fan of stoner rock from unexpected places, whether it’s the burgeoning Australian doom movement of bands like Adrift for Days and The House of Capricorn or the Polish rock boom as heard in Elvis Deluxe and Fifty Foot Woman, so to hear Urania come out of Budapest with the quality fuzz of “Stonerose” is a thrill. Their hearts and distortion pedals are in the right place, as you can hear, and with guitarist Aiwass leading the charge on most of the material, a down-to-earth track like “Corrosia” gets no less largess than does the massively-riffed “Carpathian Woodoo.”

Urania, who take their name from the Greek muse of astronomy, aren’t really doing anything that hasn’t been done before, but this is how a scene begins. There were a couple parts on the 10 MySpace tracks that I thought could have used vocals, and the bongos that pop up later into “Carpathian Woodoo” were mixed too high, but it’s not at all realistic to expect perfection from Urania when they’re just getting started. Instead, I’d advise you put on the warm fuzz of the drum-machined “Desert Melancholy” (conveniently located in the clip below) and enjoy.