Periodic Table of Heavy Metals

Inter Arma: Destroyer EP

Are these your balls sir?

Inter Arma are the best band you’ve never heard. Debut Sundown snuck up on me and wrapped a tire iron around my head to snaffle third spot in my 2010 end of year list with its amalgam of black metal, sludge and NWOBHM.

Typically when I fall in love a record, any follow-up will struggle fill its shoes.

On their Relapse Records debut EP, Inter Arma do more than buck that trend, they torpedo that motherfucker out of the water.

Witch Mountain – Cauldron of the Wild

Oh baby, what’s your doom?

The whole lady doom craze had left me baffled. Royal Thunder? Yawn. Christian Mistress? Pfft. Witch Mountain? Pah!

Yet when my esteemed fellow explorer of the heavy Sawtooth Wave cracked open a banana beer and waxed lyrical about Witch Mountain’s latest, I vowed to give Cauldron of the Wild a fair crack of the whip.

So I set aside my d-beat and got my doom on and I tell you… its feels GOOODDDD!

Cauldron of the Wild hardly tears up the blueprint laid out by last year’s breakout South of Salem, which left me cold, so it’s hard to put my finger on what makes this record such a killer.

This post would be a bit pointless if I didn’t try though wouldn’t it?

New Band: Hazzard’s Cure

Yum, broccoli and squid for tea!

It’s safe to say Hazzard’s Cure bloody love metal. The Bay Area foursome’s self-titled debut drips passion for getting toasty and losing yourself in the sweet abyss of the heavy.

Nor are these chaps monogamous to a single metal mistress.

They love to put themselves about, flirting with elements of stoner, sludge, thrash, crust, NWOBHM, black, doom… you name it, it’s here.

Terraset – Concrete Altar

Tapes, remember them? They sound like crap.

Buried under thick layers of fuzz, tape noise and feedback is this odd but endearing little gem.

Then again the murky scuzz this three-song tape is such a part of the appeal that I would hate to see it buffed clean.

Concrete Altars, the debut from Virginia duo Terraset, mixes up dirty doom and sloppy punk before burying it deep under six feet of grunge.

The vocals forgo growls or shouts for a Mark Arm style drawl, as well as the occasional frothing gibber. In fact the whole shebang wierdly reminds me of a filthier, more metal version of Green River or early Mudhoney.