Bandcamp There is a whole strain of stoner-doom that has no interest in sounding expensive, and WeedWizard plant their flag firmly in it. The Sinsheim outfit have been going since 2013, and Blood Cathedral is a raw, riff-first slab of stoner metal, doom and sludge that sounds like it was tracked live in a room with the amps too loud, which is very much the intended effect. The cover, a giant skull with a gothic cathedral bleeding out of its jaw and a sea of red grasping hands beneath, sets the tone: filthy, heavy, and gleefully unbothered with polish. The band also print “love music, hate fascism” on their own page, which is worth saying plainly in a genre whose imagery sometimes gets borrowed by the wrong people.
The murk is the point, not a flaw, and it is important to judge the record on those terms. A cheap, brickwalled modern master would ruin music like this; instead Blood Cathedral keeps a raw, rehearsal-room air with real dynamics intact, and that is exactly what the songs want. “Isolation,” one of two tracks featuring guest vocalist Ralf of Hellamor, is the clearest example of the approach paying off: it swings between wide, clean-panned passages and a dense fuzz saturation, the drums organic and un-triggered, the whole thing left to breathe in a way modern metal rarely allows. “End of Daze” is the other high point, earthy and mid-forward with the riffs staying legible over a knurled, growling bass, a genuine club-live pulse to it. When WeedWizard lock a riff to that loose, dirty groove, the record is a lot of fun.
The one place the filth tips from productive into muddy is “Trouble A.D.,” where the low mids overload into something dumpy and undifferentiated, the master shoved hard enough to flatten the whole thing into a compact wall, and a couple of the fast passages lose their riff definition under their own distortion. There is a line between the good kind of sludge grime, where the dirt has weight and shape, and a mix so dense it just smears, and this one track crosses it. Elsewhere the rawness stays on the right side, the kick sometimes short on low-end punch but the guitars keeping their nasty grain and the songs their momentum.
Blood Cathedral is an honest, unpretentious, riff-forward record from a band who know exactly what they are and do not want to be anything else. It is not reinventing stoner-doom and does not care to; it just wants to be loud, dirty and heavy, and it mostly nails that with the DIY grit worn as a feature rather than apologised for. Fans of the rawer, sludgier end of the style, the bands who keep it filthy on purpose, will find plenty to bang their heads to here. Play it loud, in a basement if you can.
Raw, riff-first stoner-doom-sludge, tracked to sound live-in-a-room, and the DIY murk is the intended effect rather than a fault. A brickwalled modern master would ruin music like this; instead it keeps a rehearsal-room air with real dynamics. “Isolation” (feat. Ralf of Hellamor) is the approach paying off, swinging between wide clean-panned passages and dense fuzz saturation, the drums organic and un-triggered, left to breathe. “End of Daze” is the other high point, earthy and mid-forward with the riffs legible over a knurled growling bass and a club-live pulse. The one place the filth tips into muddy is “Trouble A.D.,” the low mids overloading into something dumpy while the master flattens it into a compact wall and the fast passages lose riff definition under their own distortion. Elsewhere the rawness stays on the right side, the kick sometimes short on low-end punch but the guitars keeping their grain and the songs their momentum. Honest, filthy, riff-forward, wearing its grit as a feature.
Standout tracks: Isolation, End of Daze, Northern Lights
