DVNE – Asheran Review

That’s some artwork, eh? The music more than lives up to it too.

Forgive the solipsism but it’s been a very long time since I have been as excited about a band as I am about DVNE.

It’s even more thrilling that DVNE are sludge-inspired band that have picked up the baton dropped in the desert dust many moons ago by personal favourites Baroness (and to a lesser extent Mastodon and Kylesa et al) and run off in the kind of direction I wish their forebears had set their sights upon.

This blog and metal blogging in general is dead, the occasional fragrant wisp escaping from its beautiful corpse. It’s kinda sad but it’s OK. Things decay and feed what comes next. I get most of my new metal from Shreddit these days and that’s where I was gifted DVNE on the weekly recommendations thread. A wondrous serendipity.

Their new record is so damn fantastic, I dusted off my blogging trousers and set to document its dazzling brilliance.

Inter Arma – Sky Burial

Some bands just get it right.

Inter Arma have been building towards a wonderful record and this most definitely is it.

It’s bleak and it’s beautiful. At turns joyously uplifting, at others crushingly heavy. I’m fucking enchanted.

Black metal and Pink Floyd are stirred in equal parts through soaring psychedelic sludge to create something unique and utterly compelling.

Earthburner – Stoned at Birth

I don’t think babies should be allowed to smoke marijuana. They can’t roll their own for a start…

NOT the Kyuss rip-off you might expect with a bandname and EP title like that.

Instead we get satisfyingly fearsome crusty, sludgy hardcore-inflected metal that draws from the same wellspring that nourishes great bands like Black Breath and Trap Them.

While these Ohioans (is that even a word? Google says yes, so that’s good enough for me) certainly share traits with some popular beat combos du jour, their take on this sound feels their own.

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.

Baroness Live in London 2012: Heavy Ecstasy

Now it’s time for medication, stallions on the eiderdown

Some of us love metal for the darkness and mystery: cloaks, pseudonyms, smoke and ritualistic paraphernalia.

Baroness offered none of that. Just four guys and their instruments squeezed together on a low stage in a tiny upstairs room at a London bar that was packed out with adoring fans.

This was no-frills rock and roll. Band and audience giving it their all.