ninehertz

The labels Gawthrop have been involved with is telling. Their early demos and EPs, which we featured on our podcast back in April 2022, piqued the interest of our favourite Irish doom imprint Cursed Monk Records, and this new, debut full length arrives on the mighty Sentient Ruin Laboratories label, home to the harshest, most miserable and generally best extreme music worldwide. If we didn’t know so already, this label history would be a guarantee of good things regardless.

It is with good reason that these wise ears want to be involved in the South Korean’s output. This is claustrophobic sludge doom. As the opening gothic organ backing to earth shattering doom guitars subsides, you can feel a pressure on your ribs, oppressively dense and cumbersome – sludge as a taxing punishment on your ears and state of being, so swampily thick it is almost in death metal territories, on the border checks of death-doom at least.

The levels in production seem to have been increased since last time, but all this has done is added even more weight to what was already an overbearing experience. It seems to go deeper into the mire as it goes too, something unimaginable from the starting position. Gurgled vocals infect Granfalloon turning it into a turgid mess of tired movements, Nutria is in Corrupted worlds of strained note progression, whilst Jimmy sounds like an evil buried within catacombs beneath the earth’s crust; a bubbling brew of down-low disgusting noises.

No matter how long you listen to doom and sludge and become addicted to what surely must come across as depressive, laborious, ugly sounds to an outsider, it still feels strange to describe the euphoria an album as strong as this can provide. Yet is it undeniable – Kuboa is a triumphant record of sludge extremism.