ninehertz

The quick forming buzz that spread speedily outwards from London through the doom underground about this newly formed band with no recorded songs proves completely warranted. I saw Instar Sling live a couple of months back with nothing to go on except the word-of-mouth praise and it was an incredible spectacle to witness. Their debut release is now here allowing for wider recognition. This self-titled is a gargantuan first statement formed of three tracks across more than three-quarters of an hour.

Eye opens, setting out their stall of slow, mountainous doom. The entrance of the vocals recalls the experience of Alan Dubin’s angered strangulations – this is the world they bring you into, of the twisted, pressurised climes of Khanate and Burning Witch, a hell of a place to land on their demo debut and at such a fine level. For this is truly excellent, and getting slower if anything, and denser as a result.

I’m listening to the recording for the first time I’m outside in my garden in the blazing sun and the unfitting situation dampens my enthusiasm none, such is its power it drags me to them and their blackened world, turning my soul dark as the sun lights my face.

Talon Mask begins with a menacing whispered narrative that while its words are hard to grasp, its intentions seem clear: this is pissed off music and quickly turns to the full throated screech of the first song. The band hang across a clanging riff, sheer anguished desperation churning through the speakers, driven to point of mania and unhinged threat. When it breaks at five or six minutes such is the ordeal experienced I half wondered if that was the full length only to find another nine to go; you lose sense of time, sense of yourself within, its sparseness as much as its vitriol really bringing home the Khanate impressions.

Chainveil closes, more of the same – morose, misanthropic, repeating itself again and again but with no chance of clicking into a mesmeric state because it is so slow to revolve. Perhaps comatose, or catatonic would be a better description to how this behemothic song leaves you, something of Bongripper in here too perhaps. Its ending is a release from something you didn’t even realise you’d been trapped within – an album that is way more than a debut demo, more than most doom albums you’ll hear this year in fact, it is an oppressive experience, doom excelling in its extremes. It is magnificent.