Heavydeath – Demo I (Post Mortem in Aeternum Tenebrarum)
What births forth when two members of Necrocurse, a band’s whose debut Grip of the Dead landed on my End Of 2013 List, conspire together to commit their doom-ridden expectorations to cassette? Why, the hellspawn Heavydeath, of course! For the second time in as many months, a band with a seemingly infantile name has grabbed me by the throat and bade me listen. Once I did, I realized with zombie brain-feast glee that the name perfectly fits the purpose of the band, and that purpose is to pummel you with absolutely pure doom/death. The gods of Thergothon and their peers reappear on this 24 min tape, bringing with them all that made those bands great: mud-puddle tuned and distorted rhythm guitars, filth-under-your-fingernails bass, chorus-effect melody lines, slow, simple (in this case, programmed) drumming, death vocals that could till the earth before harvest, and occasional cleaned/moaned vocals that have an appealing gutter vibrato.
Though it would appear at first that Heavydeath aren’t reinventing wheels (check that name once again), the musicians responsible have an innate ability to string riffs together in ways that keep them memorable and in (slow) motion. And that’s the focus on Demo I (Post Mortem in Aeternum Tenebrarum); Nicklas Rudolfsson (guitars, vocals) and Johan Backman (bass), having sharpened their doom swords over many years in the equally great Runemagick, spent all their time on constructing what could be considered ‘orthodox’ doom/death, ultimately releasing songs that, while on a direct path back toward their influences (and their younger selves), still carry a dreariness of their own that ages well on the ear. And that unique dreariness manifests fully on the closing, untitled ‘Bonus Track’, sounding like sun-melted, coagulating Godflesh and Joy Division albums…with a death metal David Byrne on the reverbed mic (heh).
Heavydeath bury their ingenuity beneath a deep respect for the past and a painfully simple moniker, but that’s their joke on doom’s unknowing followers. For what lurks beneath the surface will move minds into the mire just as well as their genre cohorts, but with tweaks that hint at even more original ideas to come. -Jim
Caligari Records
Worm Gear 
This is pretty neat. I just picked this up.
as did i. sounds good, though i’d prefer a different format than tape.
runemagick is off and on for me, but i really, really like requiem for the apocalypse—some swagger in my doomy death.