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Duuude, Tapes! Plague Survivors, Discography & On Pain of Death, Year Naught Doom

Posted in Duuude, Tapes! on September 5th, 2013 by JJ Koczan

Whatever else you might say about the “tape revival” such as it is — that it’s ’90s nostalgia, that it’s a sham, that tapes sound like shit — cassettes remain a cheap way for bands and labels to get releases out there. You can’t put a download on the merch table. New UK imprint Dry Cough enters the tape trade with a duo of extreme sludge outings in the form of Plague SurvivorsDiscography and On Pain of Death‘s Year Naught Doom.

Each has a personality of its own, so it’s not really fair to lump them together, but there’s definitely a shared spirit of misanthropy running from one to the next, and though they ultimately approach sludge from different angles — Massachusetts-based Plague Survivors taking a punkish route that if it hasn’t yet is soon enough to have them sick of Eyehategod comparisons while On Pain of Death revel in a metallic lurch that nonetheless maintains some inhuman jaggedness over three extended tracks — both bands supply more than ample pummel. If screams are a turnoff or accessibility is sought, neither is going to be a particularly easy listen. Both are also already sold out.

For Plague Survivors, who are label catalog number “DC01” as the first Dry Cough release, the four-piece seem to take joy in their own abrasion. True to its title, the limited-to-50 Discography compiles the bulk of their work to date, and is made up of singles released digitally and individually over the course of 2012 and early 2013. Four cuts on each side, tracks arrive in the order in which they were recorded, giving a sense of progression overall as a trio of four-plus-minute crushers moves into the more atmospheric, drone-minded, 11-minute “Funeral Pyre,” which moves into Burning Witch-style filth and noise before the screams finally come. Side 2 seems to be pushing toward half-speed Pig Destroyer violence with “Witch Crusher” and “Ditch Digger,” but the closer and most recent cut of all is a wah-ready cover of Sabbath‘s “Electric Funeral,” complete with cleaner vocals in the verse, so where Plague Survivors might be headed with the next installment of their discography, I wouldn’t dare guess.

Initially released as a free download in association with Handshake Inc. last year, Year Naught Doom (“DC02”) is the first On Pain of Death full-length, and is more or less unrelenting in its lumbering assault. The tape, limited to 100 copies, comes with a lyric sheet and is more doom where Plague Survivors stick to sludge, but you wind up with oppressive tones and brutal nod either way. Vocals are growled and screamed (sometimes simultaneously) across “Year Naught Doom,” the Deadwood referential “Tell Your God to Ready for Blood” (video here) and the 17:42 “It Came from the Bog,” which seems to lower and raise its pulse at will, finding a middle course of throat-ripping screams offset by sections of malevolent atmospherics. The interplay of screams and growls goes a long way to making the nastiness at work punch-you-in-the-face apparent, but even if you had three-part harmonies over those vicious tones, you’d still come out with a sound extreme enough to turn brains to an easily-snorted cortex powder. There is very, very little fucking around to be heard.

I guess that’s true of both releases, which is probably at least part of why they’re already gone. Ditto that for the two subsequent Dry Cough tapes from Open Tomb and Esoteric Youth, so it would seems that the upstart label has no trouble getting rid of product. Fortunately, both cassettes are still available digitally, and you can check them out below:

Plague Survivors, Discography (2013)

On Pain of Death, Year Naught Doom (2012/2013)

Plague Survivors on Thee Facebooks

On Pain of Death on Thee Facebooks

Dry Cough on Bandcamp

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