Titan // Burn

I love sludge metal, but I was afraid that maybe the genre was getting soft. Last year, Mastodon turned a few heads by making The Hunter their most accessible album to date (at the expense of quality in my opinion). Then this year Torche dropped the sugary confection that is Harmonicraft on the world, inspiring some to call the album sludge pop or stoner pop. And now next month my favorite sludge outfit Baroness is set to drop their long-awaited double album Yellow & Green, which, based on what we’ve heard so far, will probably be their poppiest album to date. Is softer side of sludge becoming a trend? Not if Toronto band Titan has anything to say about it.

The band has recently dropped their mammoth album Burn on the world and what a wonderfully diverse and heavy album it is! Now while this isn’t straight sludge metal, it certainly bears enough of the scars to carry the description. Nestling right in that soft spot between doom metal and hardcore punk, Burn is a work of crushing weight. The monstrous guitars, primal vocals, and relentless percussion create this inescapable hailstorm of noise. Everything that goes into the soup here does its job to earn the band the name Titan. 

It’s an excellent album that I can’t recommend enough. It’s being offered as a free download courtesy of a new Toronto metal label called Hypæthral Records. 

(via Equivoke)

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Purity Control // Revisiting

Wow wow wow, this EP is great. I am going to beat a dead horse here, but whatever. Everything is coming up Canada when it comes to brutal hardcore! I’m seriously enamored with the scene and I keep uncovering these gems all over the place. Next in line is a band called Purity Control. After hearing this short EP I quickly went back to listen to the band’s previous material. On their Last.fm page I found a free download of their first demo tape which is pretty insane itself. It’s a particularly violent brand of powerviolence with fidelity so raw that it almost blasts itself into oblivion (seriously, check it out).

So listening to Revisiting after the demo is almost calming in comparison. The three tracks on the release are apparently some that were snipped from another upcoming release. Judging from the quality on display here that is going to be one to look out for. Settling on a more traditional hardcore punk sound, the band streamlines their sound a bit and shreds their way through these three tracks. It’s an impressive display of power that will absolutely obliterate your speakers if you’re not careful. You can download it for free from their site or from this link that the band provided. It’s like 10 MB, come on.

Have a good weekend!

 

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Wrong Hands // Wrong Hands

I am always interested in what hardcore label Blank Stare is doing. I suppose it started when they released Motivator’s self-titled EP last year, a release that became one of my absolute favorites of last year. Aside from signing great hardcore punk bands and releasing cassettes the label also runs its own zine. Yeah, they got some good juju going on over there. 

Back in January the label released the self-titled EP from a Toronto band called Wrong Hands. Such as is the case with many of their bands, this release was my first introduction to the band. And even though the EP is a quick five-track shot, the band still manages to do a lot with the time. So yeah, although this is a hardcore release on a hardcore label, Wrong Hands still manages to take the music to some really dark places. The band busts out some chugging metal riffs and the vocalist hits some surprisingly low depths with his growls getting downright guttural. It’s just another example of how great the Canadian skate punk scene is. 

Download Wrong Hands for free on Blank Stare’s bandcamp page and make sure you snoop around their other releases while you’re there. 

 

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