V

Their name says it all: Enamored of the same brutally slow tempos that inform doomsayers like Sleep and Electric Wizard, Long Island outfit Unearthly Trance stagger forward zombielike, their songs oozing out sickeningly. Their mass has been building steadily: They spent the last seven years gradually refining their sound, starting out as scorched black metal and then steadily chugging a series of codeine cocktails until they arrived at last at the black majesty that is V; its one long, slow-motion dive down a precipice into the acrid smoke of the underworld.

The songs move at a snail's pace, and are all the more punishing for their deliberateness. The great distorted clangs that open "Unveiled" are torturously protracted, the sonic equivalent of being Krazy Glued to the pavement while somebody drops anvils on your ribcage from 45 stories up. The blank space between the riffs is longer than the riffs themselves — all the air sucked out completely before the guitars come clobbering again. In short, they make Neurosis sound like a speed metal group.

Ryan Lipynsky, who fronts equally great, equally menacing doomsayers The Howling Wind, alternates between sickening black metal shriek, grinding '70s metal growl and moaning Satanic… read more »