Posts Tagged ‘Heavy’

Lustmord Lombardo – The Pulse Of Atoms

Posted: 7 October 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Ipecac Recordings – 2nd October 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Who had a collaboration between drumming legend Dave Lombardo with dark ambient / industrial demigod Lustmord on their bingo cards for 2026? No? Me neither, but then I didn’t have the US attacking Iran or an outbreak of the plague in Russia, either, so maybe my finger isn’t as much on the pulse as I thought.

This coming together has been simmering for a fair while, after all: they met backstage at a Fantômas show, introduced by mutual friend Buzz Osborne, around the time that Lustmord and Melvins released their collaborative album. That was released in 2004. It’s certainly been some time in the offing, then.

While Lombardo has enjoyed a 40-year career playing with Slayer, Misfits, Mr. Bungle, Suicidal Tendencies, and Testament among others, Lustmord’s modus operandi has largely been as a collaborator, with nearly as many albums produced with other artists as as a solo artist since he first appeared on the industrial scene with his eponymous debut in 1981.

It’s perhaps partly because of the sprawling – and lengthy – careers of the artists involved that The Pulse Of Atoms is a work that proves hard to place. It’s certainly a hell of a departure for Lombardo, given that this is, first and foremost, a dank, ominous ambient work, on which only one of the seven compositions runs short of the six-minute mark. The drums are very much a part of the texture and the atmosphere, rather than a driving or dominant force. It’s interesting to observe how a drummer whose field is metal and rock – however broadly applied – sits in a work which is explicitly neither rock nor metal, and moreover, is largely unstructured, formless, even.

“One thing about an album like this is that you can’t really point it out as being part of any specific genre or hopefully any specific period,” Lustmord explains. “Is it from last year? Is it from 10 years ago, is it from 20 years ago, is it from 5 years in the future? It’s trying to create something that has its own sound, not tapping into whatever musical language or history you’re familiar with. It goes way, way further back. This is the sound of planets dying or of stars being born. It’s about a bigger picture. It’s the sound of the birth of the universe and the death of the universe; it’s not rock and roll.” It most certainly is not, and this is very much the heart of the album’s power.

The first piece, ‘An Eternal Presence Part I: Unknown’ begins as a murky and unsettling rumble, and it’s fully two minutes before the percussion arrives. And when it does, it’s a rolling, tribal thrum. It is rhythmic, but the thunderous beats emerge from a deep, dark sonic swamp, amidst hints of Nordic forest paganism, and stop and start and feel as tentative as they do aggressive. Counterpart ‘An Eternal Presence Part II: Relentless’ lives up to its title with truly thunderous percussion, which rolls and rumbles with a rare intensity, before sliding into the grey gloop of ‘Paleomagnetic Resonance’, a dark ambient piece which drifts, formless, creepy, a slow-moving unsettling expanse of sound which drifts like fog and conjures a vision of a barren wasteland. It hums and drones and rumbles and suddenly, three minutes in, aggressive drumming crashes in and heavy drones glide down sonorously… the weight is palpable.

We crawl from the glacial desert that is ‘Beyond the Vast Cold Waste’ trepidatious, tremulous, into an apocalyptic world. Explosions ricochet in the distance. It feels like the world is ending. The experience is unsettling, but unshocking: we all knew the end was nigh. Didn’t we? This sounds and feels like the end of days. It’s suffocatingly dense. The weigh presses down on the shoulders and the back of the neck.

Like ‘An Eternal Presence’, ‘The Desolate Shore’ also spans two parts with a combined time of almost fifteen minutes. It’s here that we finally find a sense of true rhythm and groove, and Lombardo delivers driving dynamism against a swirling vortex of dark noise. The experience is like being sucked into a vacuum. It’s genuinely scary – like a warzone, like the collapse of civilisation, like the end of time. The final track, ‘The Abyssal Deep’ is ten minutes of the most desolate, disturbing ambience you’ll hear all year. It will suck the life out of you through its density alone.

This album feels less like a collaboration and more like a collision of musical colossi from very different spheres. And it’s immense, and intense.

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Listen: ‘Mutton’ by Black Groove

Posted: 7 October 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Human Worth are proud to present the punishing new album Work Yourself to the Bone from south-coast sludgers Black Groove, available to pre-order now with a portion of all profits donated to charity.

Savage, gnarly, brutal and chaotic… These words feel lightweight when it comes to describing the bludgeoning that one experiences when listening to Black Groove, or attending one of their visceral live shows. Crawling out of the darkest crevice of East Sussex coastal town Eastbourne, this gruesome sludge metal quartet have made a real name for themselves across the South of England. Known as one of the heaviest bands in the UK today, Black Groove have been packing small venues, drawing in more and more fans of disgustingly loud, heavy music through word of mouth.

Now Black Groove are ready to channel that vicious intensity and colossal heaviness into their forthcoming second album Work Yourself To The Bone, to be released on the hellish Friday the 13th of November on Vinyl, CD and Streaming via independent Brighton based label Human Worth (home to IAN, Remote Viewing, Pleb and more). A portion of Human Worth’s profits from the sales of Work Yourself To The Bone will be donated to registered UK charity Survivors’ Network, supporting survivors of sexual violence and abuse across Sussex.

Work Yourself To The Bone follows Black Groove’s impressive and raw 2024 debut album Low End Scum. The band recorded Work Yourself To The Bone live with producer and engineer Matt Pugh at Brighton Electric, who has previously recorded like-minded peers Believe In Nothing and Pascagoula. Pugh had already been a regular attendee of Black Groove in concert, and so was able to find that balance between capturing the wild energy of their live shows, whilst pushing their sound forwards and tightening the screws. “The results of working with Matt have been massive for us,” confirms bassist and vocalist Gareth Hellings; “To have a record that really represents the live sound and vibe of the band is what we wanted to achieve." Black Groove have made a conscious shift in their songwriting and lyrical topics too. "We were a lot more doomy, writing songs about shroom demons and swamp giants and whatnot," admits Hellings cheekily, "Then we made a conscious decision to write songs that were more real and relatable to us, and society as a whole.”

Black Groove will embark on a UK tour from November 13th to coincide with the release of the album. The sludge metal quartet have performed with the likes of EyeHateGod, Bongzilla, Goatwhore, Conan, Mastiff, Kulk, Sea Bastard, Believe In Nothing, Wode, Moloch and plenty more. Black Groove have also performed at key festivals and all-dayers, including Desertfest, Cosmic Vibration and Masters Of The Riff. The band hope the release of Work Yourself To The Bone will allow them to play more extensive tours, get over to Europe and make their mark at even more metal festivals.

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Emma Ruth Rundle – These Killing Times

Posted: 28 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Errant Child – 18th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

These Killing Times is Emma Ruth Rundle’s sixth studio album. It’s released on her own Errant Child label, and it’s a bold work.

As we learn from the accompanying notes, it weas ‘written as she watched from afar the devastating effects of yet another climate disaster unfold in early 2025, Emma reflected on the roots of the systemic issues that filter directly into so many catastrophic global events, and made a conscious choice to reach towards making a hopeful record. Where outside forces tempted her to turn inwards, towards isolation and hopelessness, she instead reached outwards to create a record that acknowledges pain, but offers both community and resilience in response.’

I keep thinking, and saying this – as much as anything in an attempt to process the information: the word is on fire. The world is at war. Just because World War 3 has not been declared doesn’t change the fact that with Russia vs Ukraine, The US vs Iran and the spread around the Middle East, not to mention the fringe involvement of the UK and other NATO allies in supposedly ‘defensive’ moves, and civil wars in Sudan and Myanmar, the globe is pretty hot right now. I omit Israel’s assault on Gaza and the West Bank from this list because the disproportionate imbalance disqualifies this as a war, and I shall move on from there because this is ultimately an album review, but the points and distinctions need to be made, and are fitting in context of the album’s title and inspiration. Also, when I say that the world is on fire… this is no exaggeration.

There is a sense that doing your recycling and so in is but pissing in the wind, but you have to play your part, right?

On These Killing Times, Emma Ruth Rundle takes her time in exploring her themes: all bar two f the album’s tracks extend beyond the five-minute mark, and the lilting piano of the first song, ‘Powerless’ makes for a song which is more uplifting than the title suggests. But powerless is how I’ve felt these last few months. Weak, defeated, drained, as if there was nothing I could do. But I digress: from behind the rippling notes and layered vocals blast powerful riffs which are quintessential grunge. And the way she chews her words… is glorious. It speaks of a social awkwardness, a self-conscious contradiction that balances the desire to be heard with an embarrassment of being heard too clearly. This was, of course, the dichotomy which lay at the heart of grunge, and was a particular contradiction which lay at the heart of Nirvana: the words mattered, but it was too much to sing the words with clarity.

‘God’s Picture’ is a slow-builder, whereby layers build as does the song’s power. By the end, It’s simply enormous. ‘Anvil’ is, meanwhile, subtle in its approach but, in the chorus, as heavy as the title suggests. Her vocals venture skywards with an almost folky quality towards the end of the song, but it’s the turbulence of the build which has the most impact. ‘Catherine Wheel’ spins with a rare energy, her vocal soaring and spiralling skyward.

Stripping things back, which she does – albeit infrequently – for ‘Don’t Delay Heven’ Rundle becomes most open in revealing her vulnerable side, and ‘Enough’, too is both sparse but heavy, and the intensity of the final two minutes is phenomenal, a brain—melting swirl.

These Killing Times is almost schizophrenic in the way it flicks between ponderous folk and mega riffs, but that’s it’s success, ultimately. What an album.

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Static Abyss – The Dying Hunt

Posted: 21 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Peaceville  – 28th August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

The Dying Hunt is the third album by Static Abyss, who feature Autopsy’s Chris Reifert and Greg Wilkinson. They describe themselves as ‘a monstrous hybrid of twisted, doom-laden brutal death’. And brutal it is.

On this outing, they note the addition of Chad Gailey of fellow death merchants Necrot on drums, and promise an album that ‘plummets the listener again into the festering, psychedelic swamps of lunacy, with the spiralling melodies texturing the relentless savage riffs for an effective nightmare-inducing trip through the sonic abyss. Continuously and relentlessly flitting between brutal passages and hypnotic otherworldly craziness, The Dying Hunt reflects the ailing world and the unravelling of the psyche of its inhabitants in this darkly dystopian landscape, for a masterful descent into sick Death Metal combined with Crust and Doom elements.’

Yeah. That ‘darkly dystopian’ thing… it’s the world we live in now. There’ no escaping it. It’s no longer a fringe thing. environmental disaster isn’t a conspiracy theory. Rogue AI and WW3 are no longer the domain of sci-fi and speculative fiction: governments across Europe are recommending people take peremptory action and are preparing for war. And this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. The bottom line is – and I’ve doubtless said this before – is that we’re fucked. I don’t mean this dramatically, or in any way hyperbolically.

On The Dying Hunt, Static Abyss articulate the anxiety over the sense of impending doom through the most rabid, raging, nihilistic blasts of hellish metal imaginable. The first track, ‘Skull Blasted’, is a sub-two-minute blast of scorching, soul-ripping fury. You don’t need the words, you just need to feel the force, and it tears its way through your very being like a wildfire. You feel your inner being scourged away in a mere moment.

And hell, do these mofos bring the riffs – but they also bring some psychedelic weirdness. ‘Lobotomized at Last’ swerves from relentless grind to a rather pleasant passage. It’s one of only a few. ‘Wall of Delusion’ is nothing short of overloading riff-mania, the band launching headlong into a relentless, brutal sonic assault. ‘Bleeding in the Fog’ starts out a bit mor melodic, a bit more liker it’s a lean to the raw, spitting depths. ‘Sinew Leech’ is it’s harsh and it’s brutal and the force and depth of the gut-churning grind only grows as the song and the album progresses. And it’s hellish, harsh, face-melting fury from the get-go. The face-melting ‘Bleeding in the Fog’ is exemplary. The Dying Hunt is relentless is its riffery. It’s one of those albums that is so heavy it slowly saps the life out of you.

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Might / Noisepicker – The Duck and Drake, Leeds, 17th September 2026

Posted: 18 September 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

This is a very different kind of gig vibe. I arrive way before there’s any music due on with a view to giving my brain a rest from stress with a book and a few beers. The Duck and Drake is a cracking boozer which boasts no fewer than fifteen cask ales. There are three gluten free offerings, for those who need to know these things, and several vegan brews. The Wensleydale Fire It Up IPA at 5% is a particular standout, but they’re all well-kept and the Old Peculier is superb.

Personal disclosure: I wasn’t feeling like turning out tonight. My motivation and confidence were through the floor this morning, and the prospect of heading off to Leeds on my own to an unfamiliar venue while the reliability of the trains, particularly getting home, was in question, had done little to compel me to venture out. But since Noisepicker – whose last two albums, both released via Exile on Mainstream – I had reviewed and enjoyed, had made the effort to come up from London to play a free show, and labelmates Might had made the effort to come from bloody Hanover, I knew I’d regret it if I yielded to my urge to retreat.

Shortly after my arrival, the pub’s invaded by a board of corporate tossers on a treasure hunt by way of a works night out, but they fuck off before too long, and I get to sup my pint while listening to the soundchecks, and it becomes increasingly apparent that I’ve made the right decision. Around nine, a cluster of beardies, hairies, and folks in black filter in and take up around the bar. And then the music starts.

Noisepicker are an intermittent band, and a classic example of a band who fit making music around dayjobs and whatnot. There was a seven-year gap between Peace Off and the latest, The Earth Will Swallow the Sun, and they’re not a big touring band. But on stage, they present an almost telepathic cohesion from the outset. ‘No Man Lies Blameless’ lands second as they fire up the heavy blues riffery after a slow, drawling start. Harry Armstrong’s phlegm and whiskey (or Newcastle Brown) vocals growl and howl all the pain, anguish, and anger at the state of humanity, and there are times in the set where he and drummer Kieran Murphy articulate this with raw primal screams, and it’s magnificently cathartic. ‘Chew’ starts almost jazzy before hitting its stride with a thick riff. When they slow it down and strip it back, as on ‘A Taste of My Dying’, it’s got a hefty swagger. ‘The Earth Will Swallow the Sun’ brings a barrage of percussion, Armstrong playing drum and guitar at the same time. There’s a cover of ‘War’ which kicks ass, delivered with guts and gusto, and landing between Motorhead and ZZ Top. They go low and slow for the set closer, and they kill it. The rapport between the two players is apparent, as is the fact they’re clearly loving doing what they do.

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Noisepicker

Making their UK debut, Might start their performance off the stage, with flashing lights, smoke and dark atmospherics, before a piano backing track starts… And then the drums kick in, followed by the and guitars. The sound is nothing short of mind shattering in its density. It’s hardly surprising with that towering backline which dominates the stage and this small room. They’ve not travelled light. On record, they sound immense. Live… they take the sound to a whole other dimension.

They way they’ve worked the sound – and the visuals – is remarkable. I’d been curious as to how the duo of Ana Muhi (vocals and bass) and Sven Missullis (guitar, vocals, drums) would contrive to multi-task, and what I first thought was a drum machine actually appears to be a recording of a live drum track, which is up in the mix at a volume which corresponds with a live drum kit. Consequently, it feels like there are three people on stage – and what’s more, it almost looks that way, too, as there’s a silhouette of the drums being played which – unless my eyes deceive me – is in perfect sync with the audio. And with Nosepicker’s kit on stage behind them, and an abundance of smoke, you actually get a sense of their being an extra body up there.

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Might

They churn out some monster riffs, which churn and grind, but there’s more than brute force and brutal volume happening here – there’s texture and layering, and what I can only describe as sonic alchemy. And what they conjure is something which renders the cover art for their second album, Abyss, as an aural experience, and it’s one in which time is suspended and you find yourself completely immersed and on another plane.

Stripping it back to a drone on Mrs Poise, the percussion comes from Sven striking the back of his guitar while it’s laid across his knees. The acoustic-led penultimate song ‘Tightrope Walk’ is almost folky, but nevertheless intense, Ana’s vocal delivery delicate and utterly captivating, before they close with ‘Zero’ – the final track on their eponymous debut – and it’s immense.

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Might

On the face of it, this – the first night of a little low-key package tour –was a pretty ordinary event. A couple of bands playing in a pub in a corner of Leeds. But, pitched on the premise of being 100% DIY, with free entry and serving to provide a drop of an antidote to the relentless shitness of the world, it proved to be so much more. The bands both gave it their all. The audience was small, but appreciative. They chatted with the bands, and bought T-shirts. They bought beer. And ultimately, it was pretty damn special. No corporate shit, no pissy lager in plastic cups. Grassroots music at its very best. No-one’s getting rich off this financially, but in terms of the humanity, the life-enrichment, and the inspiriting qualities of a night like this, we all end the night with wealth beyond measure.

Watch: ‘Intoxication Blues’ by Sundownder

Posted: 14 September 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Adelaide sludge merchants Sundowner are back, and things haven’t gotten any prettier.

Three years after Lysergic Ritual dragged listeners through a feedback-soaked wasteland of nihilism and decay, the Australian quartet have announced their third full-length, Cesspool, due out October 15 via Melbourne’s Disdain Records.

The band are offering the first taste of the album with ‘Intoxication Blues’, a filthy, swaggering slab of NOLA-inspired sludge accompanied by a brand-new visualizer.

Built around poisoned blues riffs, suffocating grooves, walls of feedback and a thick layer of distortion, ‘Intoxication Blues’ provides an appropriately nasty introduction to an album designed to soundtrack a world going up in flames.

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Cesspool sees Sundowner take the caustic, slow-burning sludge that has defined them since their 2021 debut Guns, Knives and Tyre Irons and push it into even more punishing territory across ten new tracks.

The band explain: “Cesspool continues on with our brand of sludge, further melding influences from the classic ’90s pioneers of the genre through our own lens out of Adelaide, South Australia.”

For Sundowner, that lineage has always been clear. The poisoned blues of Eyehategod, the ugliness of Iron Monkey and Buzzov-en, and the smoke-filled grooves of Weedeater remain embedded in their DNA. But Cesspool isn’t interested in simply recreating the past. Instead, those influences are fed through Sundowner’s own distinctly Australian strain of hostility.

The album also sees Sundowner reunite with the production team behind Lysergic Ritual. After handling virtually everything themselves during the band’s early years, Sundowner brought Jason Fuller of Goatsound Studios into the fold to mix their second album, with Dav Byrne of Iridium Audio handling mastering.

“We went with the same production team as our last album, but pushed everything further for a more punishing and abrasive sound,” says the band.

Across its ten tracks, Cesspool doubles down on everything Sundowner do best: filthy blues, crushing grooves, abrasive riffs and pure sludge-soaked hostility. It’s heavier, nastier and more punishing, without straying from the band’s uncompromising roots.

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Listen: ‘Whole Wide World’ by The Body and Cel Genesis

Posted: 11 September 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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The Body and Cel Genesis share ‘Whole Wide World,’ the title track and second preview from their debut collaborative album of the same name, out November 13 via Thrill Jockey.
The song wastes no time getting to the point, fusing the punishing force of power electronics with a bitter nihilism that runs throughout the record. Built on lyrics by Chip King and Pauline Poderoso about exhaustion and the limits of continuing to place hope in humanity, the track offers a direct distillation of what emerges when the two projects’ sounds and sensibilities collide.

That confrontation extends to the song’s construction. As Chris Danko of Cel Genesis explains, when bandmate Poderoso delivers the line “You want a key change?,” the song gives way not to a key change but to a crushing breakdown, a moment that plays with spectacle while deliberately addressing and challenging the listener.

About the track, Chris comments, “What was once before you – an exciting, mysterious future – is now behind you. Lived; understood; disappointing. You realise you are not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone’s experience.”

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The collaboration was first conceived on tour, with few parameters set in advance, letting Cel Genesis’ maximalist compositions and aggressive editing meet Body’s improvisational approach on even ground, with both projects pushing their ideas to their outermost limits. The resulting record draws heavily from trance, distortion, and experimental electronics, anchored by the visceral interplay of dual drumming from Lee Buford and Nick Cowman and the combined force of both groups’ vocals.

Recorded at Machines with Magnets by Seth Manchester, with additional recording by Andrew Oswald in California, Whole Wide World evolved over two years of recording and meticulous editing. Some songs began with electronic beds generated by Cel Genesis, while others grew from live drums, with each group reshaping and reimagining the material.

Whole Wide World is a dense and heavy album, but one that nevertheless feels joyful and fresh—an uncategorizable ode to egoless invention. It’s a work born of artists with disparate approaches, who feel compelled and comfortable to surrender them in service of the birth of new art. Whilst the album was made with joy, its themes confront today’s harsher realities; we see this play out through the eyes of an unrelenting optimist processing the death of possibility itself.

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Photo: Chris Danko

Everything Decays – Requiem II: We Will Slaughter the Lambs

Posted: 10 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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11th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Numbering a debut album ‘II’ might seem rather odd, but it’s by no means a first: Throbbing Gristle’s debut was The Second Annual Report, after their first two cassette-only releases were entitled The Best of Throbbing Gristle (Vol I and II respectively). However, with Everything Decays, it follows their first EP, Requiem 1: The Serial Killer’s Symphony of Liberation, Deliverance and Relief, and the album, written as a story, continues an ongoing narrative in which each song is a chapter. So far, so conceptual. When it comes to plot, there are certainly no spoilers in the nots which accompany the album, which they describe as ‘A descent into the darkest corners of the human mind, where oppression breeds trauma, trauma ignites rage, and rage demands retribution. The album follows the journey of those who have been stripped of their humanity, rising against their oppressors only to discover that revenge comes at the cost of their own souls. It is a story of pain, resistance, justice, and the thin line between liberation and becoming the very evil they swore to destroy.’

The Dutch deathcore / hardcore quartet threaten ‘crushing riffs, filthy grooves, savage vocals and bone-shattering breakdowns, dragging hardcore aggression into one hostile wall of sound. They describe their music as an overload of quick and loud noise.’

Opener, ‘Miserere mei, Deus’ arrives with an unexpectedly folksy ring and a thick but elastic bass sound which sounds almost synthy, and the whispered vocal is soft but menacing… and over the course of two and a half minutes it builds… and it builds. But then faceripping guitar chords and thunderous drums crash in and the vocals turn rabid, driving into a complex but hard-hitting slab of metalcore rage, which dovetails directly into lead single ‘Crowd Control’ where shit really goes off. We’ve all seen how police and governments implement crowd control – and, at times, somewhat selectively at that – and Everything Decays approach the topic with a suitably extreme suite of imagery, with tendrils, bones, peeled flesh and spilling guts in a frenetic, kinetic, and frankly devastating metal explosion. The final section is a slow trudge that draws as much on the pulverising weight of Swans and Godflesh as anything from the death / hardcore end of the spectrum, but dropping the BPM to that of ‘barely alive’ means that ‘Broken Vessels’, which powers in at a hundred miles an hour has even more impact. And this is something that does stand out about Requiem II: We Will Slaughter the Lambs – the pacing, the switches. Unravelling the narrative may not be an easy task, or one most listeners are even willing to undertake, but the way in which the individual songs move between one segment to the next, and how the songs, in turn, slot together to build the album as a whole… it’s clear there’s been a great deal of thought and technical application gone into this. It certainly isn’t just a bunch of songs cobbled together in a fortuitous sequence.

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It is, however, a crafted sequence of compositions planned and pieced together for maximum impact, and Requiem II: We Will Slaughter the Lambs is both relentless and brutal. The album’s centrepiece – and the longest of the seven tracks – ‘Adrenaline – A Lifetime Filled With Rage’ rips the doors off their hinges as it enters the set. A spindly, serpentine intro tinged with esoteric Eastern flavours swiftly melts into a wall of annihilate anguish which goes straight-up Nu-Metal a couple of minutes in, lumbering low and heavy.

‘Guillotine’ is a rush of snarling, gnarly fury, although the contrasting dual vocals, which pitch a clean delivery sits alongside all the swirling chaos. Hints of accessibility eddy on the peripheries, until finally, we arrive at the exit and ‘Rejoice the Butcher’ with an unexpected but well-timed glimpse at an approximation of pop, or at least melodic metal. Ordinarily, I’d say that a song like this breaks the mood but here, now, the prospect of escape, and time time just to breathe has appeal. Because Requiem II: We Will Slaughter the Lambs is nothing short of breathtaking. Soak it in, and enjoy, while you can.

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Pic: Dave van Hout

Watch: ‘The Desolate Shore Part I: Submergence’ by Lustmord Lombardo

Posted: 10 September 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Lustmord Lombardo, the pairing of two of heavy and experimental music’s most respected musicians, ambient heavyweight Lustmord and percussive force Dave Lombardo, release ‘The Desolate Shore Part I: Submergence’ from the duo’s forthcoming album, The Pulse of Atoms (Oct. 2, Ipecac Recordings).

“’The Desolate Shore’ is a meditative landscape that feels like a slow descent into the abyss,” Lombardo says of the newly released track. “There is a sense of the ground moving beneath you as shifting rhythms make it feel like nothing is ever completely still beneath the surface.”

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Lustmord, discussing the duo’s approach to the album, shared: “One thing about an album like this is that you can’t really point it out as being part of any specific genre or hopefully any specific period. Is it from last year? Is it from 10 years ago, is it from 20 years ago, is it from 5 years in the future? It’s trying to create something that has its own sound, not tapping into whatever musical language or history you’re familiar with. It goes way, way further back. This is the sound of planets dying or of stars being born. It’s about a bigger picture. It’s the sound of the birth of the universe and the death of the universe; it’s not rock and roll.”

The two musicians met backstage at a Fantômas show, introduced by mutual friend Buzz Osborne, around the time that Lustmord and Melvins released their collaborative album. Nearly two decades later, Lombardo and Lustmord convened as Lustmord Lombardo, crafting an album that is as cold and distant as it is frantic and engaging. The Pulse of Atoms showcases an unheard side of Lombardo and brings Lustmord back to his industrial roots.

Rather than composing songs in a traditional sense, Lustmord built evolving walls and vortices of sound, leaving room for Lombardo to add percussion and various synthesizer layers. Once the editing and arrangement was complete, Lustmord mixed and mastered the record, which was a balancing act between the two players’ large, loud musical presences.

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Watch: ‘Old Gold’ by Gnod

Posted: 8 September 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Two decades have passed in the land of Gnod, yet the psychic travelogue only becomes more enthralling as it goes on. The page is turned, a new chapter begins… Chronicles of Gnowt (Vol. 2) will arrive via Rocket Recordings on 9th October.

Today, the band share the King Tubby-inspired ‘Old Gold’, taken from their transcendentally heavy middle instalment in the Chronicles of Gnowt trilogy.

Paddy comments, “The words for ‘Old Gold’ have been floating around the Gnod universe since 2008 waiting for the right rhythm. 18 years later the right rhythm appeared. This track was further enhanced by our (sometimes) sound engineer Raikes jumping on guitar, wah and space echo and Spud Murphy approaching the mix like King Tubby.”

Chris adds, “The rhythm came from jamming in the rehearsal room on a one note riff / rhythm that I was playing on the bass. It was one of those riffs that stuck & became a track.”

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