“Elf”

Castle – Blacklands

Album number two from this Bay Area female-fronted doom trio. Funeral doom this is not—eight tracks spanning less than 36 minutes. From the upbeat (if none too uplifting) chugs and gleaming instro passages of the opener “Ever Hunter” through the piercing, haunted wails and jagged riffing of “Corpse Candles,” this is not your slogging bog-band doom, either.