When you think of sludge metal, what do you think of? I think about a band that gets real filthy and doesn’t hold s**t back for anyone, and sadly those kinds of bands have been disappearing recently and that raw sound that many of us love is going away. But like a diamond amongst the dirt, Sourvein present to us their upcoming album “Aquatic Occult”. A fourteen track beast from start to finish, Sourvein gives us a piece that is as raw as it is ridiculously awesome. This record is not only sludge but also doom, but this band doesn’t go the traditional route with doom metal and make the songs over six or seven minutes long. Instead, Sourvein goes the opposite way and makes the longest song off this album not even four and a half minutes long, and while that sounds like borderline blasphemy to doom fans “Aquatic Occult” has a performance that throws all negativity out the window because Sourvein really makes the shorter songs work extremely well. They combine unrelenting ferocity with a slower tempo and the saltiness of the sea itself to create a unique sludge/doom experience that you’d be super hard pressed to find anywhere else on the planet. Each and every track in “Aquatic Occult” features raw vocals, powerful guitars, a viciously good bass, and a set of drums that pound away at your ears better than the crashing waves of the sea. And if that doesn’t get you then maybe the fact that Randy Blythe himself is featured in “Aquatic Occult” and gives his approval over it should say something about Sourvein‘s “unconventional” sound. In the end Sourvein has created an album that is unique in a genre that has recently become quite lack luster and boring, but “Aquatic Occult” is a gift straight from the depths of the sea in the form of a relentless and brutal piece of sludge mixed with doom that does not hold back for even a second, and it’s fantastic because of that.
“Aquatic Occult” releases on April 8th! You can pre-order the album via iTunes here, and listen to the single “Ocypuss” via YouTube below.
