With their sophomore full-length, Terminal, Annandale, Virginia-based sludgers Salome make what might just become their definitive statement of intent. The bass-less guitar/drum/vocal trio blast out seven torturous tracks of blisteringly demented doom, seeming to revel in the misery they propagate. The guitars mask the otherwise missing bottom end, and though what the band bring to sludge innovates more in terms of overall aesthetic than sound, their ultra-hateful atmosphere and penchant for the dynamic is even more what contributes to the success of Terminal.

My go-to comparison point for this kind of über-doom is generally Khanate, and while Salome are less minimalist in everything but the lyrics and vicious screams of Katherine Katz, there are some similarities. Perhaps a more appropriate analogy could be made to New Orleans madmen Thou, who affect a similarly unstable ambience in their music yet maintain a lofty air of artistry. With Terminal, Salome presents thoughtful if openly-structured songwriting in a style bent on extremity, and their balance of noise and monstrous riffing shows itself right from the beginning of “The Message.” The track (and thus, the album) begins with Echoplex noise that gets cut off by the guitar of Rob Moore and the drums of Aaron Deal, who begin the song with Katz following shortly behind on vocals. It’s a technique they use several times throughout Terminal, perhaps most noticeably as the 17-minute noise-only fuck-you  “An Accident of History” leads into the decidedly more active “The Witness.” It’s a way for Salome to make their songs more memorable, and despite being telegraphed by the time you’re mostly through the album, it works.

If you’re the kind of person to skip a song, however, it’s all the more likely you’ll just pass by “An Accident of History” altogether, since it’s genuinely hard to sit through. Moore offers some changes in his guitar noise, amp hum, droning, etc., but it’s all abrasive and it’s a challenge I’ve only managed to meet a couple times in listening to Terminal. The shorter bursts of noise, like that which ends “The Message” and bleeds into Deal’s starting the title track, seem more purposeful, but it’s obvious Salome didn’t have accessibility in mind when putting together the album. That said, the rhythmic pulse driving “Master Failure” and Katz’s near-perfect cadence of “We tried, we failed” accompanying make for one of Terminal’s strongest and hardest-hitting moments. At 6:45, it’s second only to the title cut as the shortest song on the record, but it’s also the tightest structurally, so the change is noticeable in more than one way. I wouldn’t look for it to be a hit single anytime soon, but it’s bound to stick with lovers of the gruesomely extreme in sludge.

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