Stephen Murray

This review first appeared on  Broken Amp  on 24 May 2017. Identifying genre is often contentious, especially when a band’s membership comes from diverse musical backgrounds or has consciously decided to bridge the conceptual gaps between. But far from narrowing the artistic potential of a band or solo musician, genre tags can be useful tools with which to find and select musical preferences, providing they remain adaptable and are descriptive rather than prescriptively laying down what music ought to sound like. But this freedom also risks their most useful function being undermined. ‘Sludge’ as a label for a style of heavy rock and metal is in danger of depreciation. As more and more bands of vastly disparate styles are tagged with it, its usefulness as a label and filter grows ever more uncertain. We learn to mistrust it. In such a treacherous and unstable landscape, London’s Gurt appear as a reliable if more recent landmark, ticking many of the boxes you would expect ...

This review first appeared on  The Sludgelord  on 26 April 2017. I missed the release of Without Condolence at the end of last year. Cowardice is not a name I have seen about too much, either, but it should be. Somewhere between the despairing chug of Arizona’s gone-but-not-forgotten Wellington and the searing angst of His Hero Is Gone , this debut is the collective effort of some New Jersey scene regulars. It was recorded last summer and it moves like a soot crusted diesel-electric freight train leaking oil and coughing a dark brown carcinogenic fume. The drumming is a thing of beauty. It slinks and slouches; explodes, shimmers and tinkles. The vocals have that clawing desperation that perfectly exploits the emotional weight of the music which sways between melancholic, gritty, picked melodies and fully blown out chords as evil as pitch-shifted black metal. The whole tone of the album is so well judged that the acoustic number sandwiched in the centre doesn’t feel ...

This review first appeared on  The Sludgelord  on 11 April 2017. There is a Riff . It’s of the swampy kind that jacks directly into what remains functional of your richly barbecued, southern fried central nervous system. It appears about three minutes into the record’s opening song, ‘Veiled Aggressor,’ but you’d be doing it a disservice to skip ahead. The angry hardcore hammering of the first minutes leads into it perfectly, and is more than a vehicle to get you there; it’s a foot stomper of its own. Little wonder that this was the track used to signal Witchapter ’s arrival. The band’s debut release is the latest thing on Black Bow Records menu. So fresh, in fact, their first official outing was only a couple of weeks ago when they opened for Italy’s blackened warlocks Hierophant in a rather badly attended basement beneath a bar on the Margate coast. Having played their three extant songs (choosing a set order that took ‘Veiled Aggressor’ from the top and dropped it ...

This review first appeared on The Sludgelord on 3 April 2017. This is not doom. Even less is it sludge. The influence of those genres can be felt, but to understand Ohhms under those terms is misleading. Three years on since Ohhms' first appearance outside the rehearsal room, it is still unclear who first applied these labels to the band, though there's no doubt that these are labels the group have done nothing to eschew. Speaking outside Camden's Black Heart in 2014 before their second ever gig, the deal with Holy Roar not yet in the bag, vocalist Paul had admitted as much. "To be quite honest I would be happy to be lumped in with the doom thing just because it's different and there [are] elements of doom in [our music]," he had said. And yet, out of the then 30 minute set they had, only eight minutes were described by Paul as doom. He'd timed it. So what are they? "Classic rock, if anything," he'd said then. 'The F...

This review first appeared on The Sludgelord on 23 March 2017 What is it with the sea and some of doom’s more sombre bands? The rich nautical repertoire of songs about the hauntings of dead sailors, ghost ships and ungainly, ill-omened seabirds notwithstanding, the Big Water has proved an irresistible draw for many bands. Indeed, there appears to be three themes prevalent in doom right now: the sea, the occult and H.P. Lovecraft, and the greatest of these is Lovecraft (go on, argue for the occult; I’m listening). Written over three months and recorded live in a few hours, albeit with two different vocal sessions, Greenhorn’s “The Narrator” evokes the sea through a petroleum-jelly-soft Lovecraftian lens. Not to say this track lacks throat, rather that it balances gnarled guitar tones that roil and gurgle with the allure and seduction of ethereal Siren calls rendered in beautiful-if-creepy sung harmonies. The rich vintage glow swathed about both guitar and bass in the solos sati...

This interview first appeared on The Sleeping Shaman on 9 June 2014. It is a warm afternoon. Bright sunlight piles into the Lexington on Pentonville Road through large windows set in two adjacent walls. The pub is quiet, almost dead, save for the jukebox which crunches out some indie rock, presumably for the benefit of the largely untroubled barman. Last night Japanese rock nobility, Boris, headlined the Electric Ballroom and helped to bring Desertfest 2014 to a climactic close. They are now comfortably installed in a corner booth, and though coffee is laid before them, they appear fresh and alert, well-groomed and seemingly unburdened by the pitfalls traditionally associated with rock musicians on the road. Yet some other shadow is disquieting them. “I hate cassette.” The verdict is delivered slowly, unequivocally and in English. Up until now, Atsuo, Takeshi and, theoretically, Wata have had their words recast from their native Japanese to English by an interpreter p...

This interview first appeared on The Sleeping Shaman on 6 March 2014. In summer 2011, two bands from the UK’s south coast, Jovian and Funeral Hag, broke up. Being at a temporary loss, four refugees from these bands decided to jam together. An hour into the session they had written their first song and Sea Bastard, as they were to become known, had formed. Ever since their first gig on Hallowe’en that year lending support to Pagan Altar they have been washing up in many a town to ply their doom. I caught up with them on one of their recent inland excursions. The headline is going to be ‘Sea Bastard Hate Guinea Pigs’. “Yeah, that’s fine,” agrees guitarist and riff-writer Oli ‘Irongiant’ Heart. But he wants to be clear on the point: “I hate the people who like guinea pigs more than the guinea pigs themselves.” A biting wind cuts across the handful of wooden tables which constitute The Unicorn’s beer garden, overlooking the rumbling traffic on London’s Camden Road. We...