Misery Wizard is the first full-length release from this Rhode Island trio, though it’s clear from the first note that they’ve taken a few classes at the University of Doom Metal.

Tickets are now on sale online for the RAFFLE OF DOOM, running up till the end of March. You won’t get this kinda haul from your local record store, that’s for sure. Here, see for yourself…

Take this posting about the new Pagan Altar/Mirror of Deception split 7″, for instance, in which PA bassist Manny Cooke reveals that the song his band contributes is a guide track–not the full lineup, just Al & Terry Jones with a drum machine. What happens next can only be described as a flame war of epic proportions, the best bit of doom drama not involving Bobby Liebling since Andy Beresky’s epiphany.

By Gruesome Greg
Last year, Candlemass released Death Magic Doom, an album that showed they’re still one of the top epic doom bands going after 25 years, while fully integrating new vocalist Rob Lowe of Solitude Aeturnus into the fold. Ashes to Ashes was recorded on the subsequent tour, capturing the band’s 5 o’clock set at the Sweden Rock Festival, along with a gig in Athens, Greece. The live CD features the 65-minute performance in their home country, and shows that the first three tracks from their latest record (“If …

Mares of Thrace played last on the bill, and brought the night to a thunderous close. I am profoundly interested in the aesthetics of constraint and the way art can be produced by limitation. Mares of Thrace plug directly into this particular obsession. Consisting only of vocals, baritone guitar and drums, this two-woman force of nature produce a wall of sound: intense and varied, deep and resonant, pulsating and urgent, and shockingly complex.

Here are some of my photos of The Gates of Slumber, live in Toronto on April 8, 2010. I will put up pics of the other bands in the days to come

Modestly experimental and incredibly grandiose by their standards, this double album (their first ever) clocks in at an ungodly 80-plus minutes, way more than it should but, hey, it’s Cathedral. You know the fuzz-pedals were particularly gritty one day and writing got out of hand.

W4: The Green Album is a difficult journey. There is a great deal of darkness, and there are certainly wolves (and worse) in these particular Woods. But, as a listener, you are never without a guide. However difficult and painful it may be, this was David Gold’s journey before it was yours, and it is going to hurt him a lot more than it hurts you.