Ep Review - Mu Cephei- 'Demo'

Location:Kildare, Ireland

Label:Unsigned

Release Date:August 2013


Lurching forth from a practice space in deepest Kildare(a county known for it's high level of gloom), doom/sludge trio Mu Cephei are intent on raping your ears and poisoning your mind with their own brand of noxious psychedelic doom.Sans a bassist, they  nevertheless manage to conjure up a cacophony of primal low end noise, imbued with a touch of deft melody, that should have fans of slo-mo, hypnotic violence foaming at the mouth(dirty bastards that they are.)

Owing more than a small debt to the horrific mantras of bands like Electric Wizard, Mu Cephei deal in the kind of oppressive, funereal dirges that put one in mind of every kind of drug sickness you can imagine.From the first monolithic rumblings of opener 'ilyushin' , to the closing feedback and phaser  drenched moments of  'Vacuum Phase Transition', the atmosphere created is reminiscent of a particularly bad come down, the kind that invades your every sense of being and stays with you for months afterwards.Front man Rob's vocals, drenched as they are in reverb and buried way down in the mix, are perfectly judged, all clean singing, albeit hidden under as many effects as humanly possible.It's a sound closer to prime Church Of Misery or Icelandic loons Volva than say, Eyehategod, swathes of psyche-tinged misery filtered through a production that is as warm and stripped down as they come, allowing the band's murky sound room to breath.

Even though this is essentially a glorified demo, the quality of what's on offer here pisses all over most 'proper' full length doom releases this year.Give it a few months, ,and maybe a full length ,  and Mu Cephei will no doubt join the likes of Weed Priest and Slomatics in flying the flag for Irish sludge/drone/doom bands.Essential, addictive, evil stuff.

Rating: 8.5/10

For fans of :Electric Wizard, Slomatics, Ufomammut, Weed Priest

Buyit here(name your price download) here:http://mu-cepheidoom.bandcamp.com/album/demo

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MuCephei

Album Review - Bitcho 'Toybox'

It seems appropriate that Bitcho's band bio describes the six piece as being from the Dutch 'lowlands', considering that 'Toybox' is clearly the work of people from some kind of hellish subterranean piss soaked bunker, people who've been starved of love and light for so long , that they've turned their vicious loathing of mankind inward, and managed to dredge up depths that only the few tortured souls of the abyss might know otherwise.

It's a vicious, hate filled, but also meditative four super long tracks of queasy ambience, subdued narcotic heaviness,that revels in it's repetitive nature, the band nursing their foul, tortured rumblings with the delirious loll and creak of three bass guitars , and combining said foul rumblings with an edge of industrialized menace, that recalls the fucked up space rock of bands like Swords Of Texas, along with the murky , acrid doom of old hands like Om and Electric Wizard.The band's sonic deviance could almost be a soundtrack to some forgotten , black and white experimental horror film(one is put in mind of Begotten , or Tetsuo the Iron Man) .It does get repetitive, granted, but that's the whole point.

And so while the band do showcase some lighter sensibilities especially in closer ' Expectations' and it's oddly bombastic, analog- abuse hymnal, it's a fleeting glimpse of any hope being found, and the over all sensation upon finishing the record is of having witnessed the death throes of some awesome , prehistoric beast. In other words:heavy shit.

Rating:8/10

For fans of :Om , Neurosis, Swords Of Texas, Ufomammut

Listen here:http://bitchodrone.blogspot.com/

Stephen O ' Connor