Bandcamp Cornucopia get filed under doom, and the weight is certainly there, but Songs for Unfortunate Times plays a good deal harsher and dirtier than that lineage implies. This is raw, fuzz-drenched sludge with one boot in noise rock, shouted and screamed vocals thrown against a saturated wall of guitar, everything captured with a live-room bleed that keeps the whole thing sounding like four people in a room leaning on their amps. There is no polish here and none is wanted, the French band trading clarity for grit and mood at every turn.
At its best that raw commitment pays off. “Clean All My Beliefs” is the clearest example, a deliberately dirty wall of sound where the drums keep an honest, earthy punch under the fuzz, the kick grounded and the cymbals rough without turning shrill, and “The Obscure Side of Time” works a similar organic live feel, the bass genuinely growling before it sinks back into the guitars. The closer “The End to Come” leans furthest into atmosphere, the instruments melting into a hazy, spacious wall that suits the record’s grey mood. When Cornucopia let the drums breathe and the fuzz swell, the album has real presence.
The recurring problem is that the murk almost never lifts. Across all eight tracks the guitars and bass fuse into a single low-mid rumble, somewhere in that boxy 200 to 500 Hz range, and the note separation vanishes exactly when the riffs get dense; the kick keeps losing its click under the saturated bass, and the master is pushed so hard that tracks like “Desperation Streets” and “Eternity Screams” flatten into a constant, claustrophobic loudness with little room to move. Sludge is meant to be heavy and dirty, and a lot of this is dirty by design, but the mud here is uniform enough that the songs start to blur into one another by the back half.
Songs for Unfortunate Times is an honest, committed, thoroughly raw sludge record with atmosphere and grit to spare, the kind of thing that would hit hard in a sweaty basement. It is held back by a mix that keeps everything in the same murky register, so the dynamic and textural range never quite matches the conviction. Cornucopia clearly mean every note; a little more air between them would let that conviction land.
Filed under doom but far harsher: raw, fuzz-drenched sludge with a foot in noise rock, shouted and screamed vocals over a saturated wall of guitar, all captured with a live-room bleed. The raw commitment pays off on the more dynamic tracks: “Clean All My Beliefs” keeps an honest, earthy drum punch under the fuzz, “The Obscure Side of Time” lets the bass genuinely growl, and the closer “The End to Come” melts into a hazy, atmospheric wall. The recurring weakness is that the murk rarely lifts: across all eight tracks guitars and bass fuse into a single low-mid rumble around 200 to 500 Hz, note separation vanishes in dense passages, the kick loses its click under the saturated bass, and the master is pushed so hard (“Desperation Streets,” “Eternity Screams”) that it flattens into constant, claustrophobic loudness. Honest and gritty with real presence, held back by a uniformly muddy mix.
Standout tracks: Clean All My Beliefs, The Obscure Side of Time, The End to Come
