The Asteroid Bullet Belt

I'm in the club, listening to the brown note. New year, new shows, same old me. It’s been a week since I got to see Conan live, but I’m only just getting around to actually writing about it. Admittedly, more factors than procrastination factored into this, some of them directly related to the show itself, but that’s to be discussed over the course of this report, so do be patient. I’m uncertain as to whether I’ve mentioned it before, but Thessaloniki as a city has always been about black, thrash, and heavy/power metal, in no particular order. Stuff like death and sludge are in woefully short supply, with the only instance of a sludge band having come over recently being Eyehategod back in 2025, a time where I wasn’t in the country, let alone the city itself. As you can imagine, seeing an ad for Conan playing here was cause for excitement. The Scouse trio’s primitive brand of sludge, riffy and amplifier worshipping in equal measure, has been something that I’d grown quite fond of ov...

Digging through the sky, hoping to find God. 2023 was an exceptionally industrious year for Full of Hell, one that saw them collaborate with bands across a variety of genres, some closer to their own than others. From the (unfortunately middling) split with powerviolence chameleons Gasp, to the harrowing shoegaze-cum-sludge collaboration When No Birds Sang with Nothing,the Maryland quintet never kept their love of non-metallic music a secret, but that year saw them put their hands in more pies than they usually do, in lieu of there not being a proper full-length to dig into. Among that year’s partnerships was also the one with the black-hole-dense trio that is Primitive Man, who also happen to draw from a similarly noisy well, although their guitar riffs lay on the opposite side of the tempo spectrum, instead opting for crushingly misanthropic trudges through sludge. In short, although there are common points between the two, they never struck me as the types of bands that would cross...

We've yet to reach the peak, and perhaps we never will. (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on October 11th 2025)  I’ve always found sludge to be the most “emotional” subgenre of metal. Not because it covers a wide spectrum mind you, but because of how little pretension there is behind it. Other metal subgenres, such as black metal, can be called “misanthropic” or “nihilistic”, along with a slew of other empty adjectives that I’m not all that averse to using, but these sentiments are oftentimes obscured by a subtle layer of romanticism that is nowhere to be found in sludge. The music is unremittingly vitriolic and hateful, and you’d be hard pressed to find anything that doesn’t fall under those categories in the most extreme ends of the genre. The sheer despondence expressed through the thick and oppressive atmosphere conjured by bands in the style makes them far more resonant than the chilly grimness that I’ve found to be more fitting to a change in seasons...

Who's gonna cast a miracle on this? (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on March 20th 2024)  2023 was a very productive year for Full of Hell. The deathgrind/noise outfit has always been very active when it came to collaborating with other artists across a multitude of genres, but last year was a particularly interesting one, with the quartet working with bands like Primitive Man, Nothing, and in the case of the other half of this release, Gasp. Truth be told, I was wholly unacquainted with the latter group before listening to this split, and like any self-respecting music fan I decided to visit some of their past work in order to gain a new perspective on this particular project. On the whole, Full of Hell and Gasp operate with a surprisingly unified vision for a split, a format commonly known for somewhat disparate and inconsistent sounds. Both artists emphasise ambience drenched in feedback and noise, Gasp in particular lacing their two songs with some ...

Regaining sight of what's important. (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on May 21st 2022)  It would seem that A.L.N. has been quite busy this year. We had the (somewhat disappointing) Wit’s End EP back in February, and now he has collaborated with none other than Thou for their most recent project, and the topic of this review, Myopia . The two bands got together and dedicated a set to it at Roadburn Festival, and ever since I caught wind of it I’ve been waiting for a proper release. And as is tradition by this point, I’m fashionably late to covering it, in part due to having to take my time and appreciate its excellence. Turns out it’s an effortless blend of both bands’ styles, as well as one of this year’s finest releases so far. Musically, the two groups complement each other nicely, adding something extra to each other’s sound, while at the same time finding some common points which they build upon. Using feedback-laced drones as a base, Mizmor and Th...

Sigma Male Grindset. (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on July 1st, 2021)  Caged Bastard has always been a fascinating project ever since I discovered it with 2019’s Artificially Alive EP. Muhammad Oun’s peculiar mix of metal and non-metal genres really made an impression on me, seeing as I haven’t quite found something that scratches the same itch outside of the man’s own work. 2021’s Strive EP is the band’s first release in 2 years, which is notable due to the fact that Muhammad had been releasing quite a bit of material ever since the project’s inception in 2018. Thankfully, the wait between this and 2019’s Scour… definitely wasn’t for naught, seeing as we’ve received another quality project. The EP is comprised of the eponymous track, a sprawling 25 minute long behemoth that undoubtedly warrants its length. It ebbs and flows through many different sections, alternating from ambient noise and feedback to sludgy bass driven riffs and furious tremolo r...

 Ascending the house Man built.  (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on April 15th 2021)  Ever since their inception, This Gift Is A Curse has been intent on releasing the most intense music they could possibly make. From the more hardcore influenced trappings of their earliest output to the excellent All Hail the Swinelord , the band has been exploring different aspects of their sound with each release. 2019's A Throne of Ash was my introduction to the band, its unbridled rage being something new to me at the time, opening my eyes to another intense variant of black metal. Following a short introductory track, the band pulls all the stops and hits the listener with "Blood Is My Harvest". It's a vicious song to properly kick things off with, in no small part due to the band members' performances. The sheer ferocity on display is one of this album's greatest strengths, and it truly makes this band stand out among their peers. Though that d...

A genre-defying masterpiece. (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on May 10th 2020)    The 1990s were an interesting time for heavy music, thrash went heavily down in popularity and gave way to groove metal, while in the underground death metal was gaining more and more traction among fans of extreme music. Grunge was also one of the most popular forms of music at the time and saw a lot of success with bands like Alice In Chains mixing moody soundscapes with slow and heavy riffing. But down in the American South something very unique was taking shape, that being sludge metal, with bands like Crowbar and Eyehategod mixing together the aggressive tempos and energy of hardcore punk with thick riffing akin to that of doom metal, and creating a subgenre that while not very popular, has maintained a steady following and has seen a stream of quality releases from a multitude of bands, one of which is Acid Bath, who in 1994 released their seminal debut, When the Ki...