ninehertz

Go look at the cover art of Ilon Lapset’s Pettymysten aikakausi, then listen to the first minute or two of the first track, how they choose to introduce their sludge… this is what drew my attention to this band and made them stand out amongst the masses.

I remind myself of that album before heading in here – it’s still as bewildering as when I first heard it – and am then smiling to find a low atmospheric and ambient drum and bass introduction to this new album, fading away as before – no seamless transition, just a blunt clash – allowing the sludge to dirty matters.

They’re seemingly of a modern Finnish sludge school which is by consensus and nature desolate and harsh, revoltingly revolving slow riffs the order of the day. It is at times sooooo sloooooow, to the point where you wonder if they’ll make the next note on an occasion or two…. just as sludge should be then.

Juon Yksin is a lazy seesaw guitar staggering home from a long session at the pub, more side to side than forward, demented vocals adding to the woozy mood, the whole song akin to a drunken metalhead shouting into the void. It ventures into more traditionally doom climes towards the album’s end, before finishing with one final splurge in the form of Pimeyden Sydän, essentially at funeral doom levels with the squalid sludge vocals atop running amok, appropriately decaying before your ears to its final demise.

Ilon Lapset – obtuse and inexplicable dance intros aside – are pure in their sludge, an ugly, lethargic mess of downtuned riffs and rabid vocals. It is therefore of course very welcome here.