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    Icarus Burns – Icarus Burns

     

     

    Icarus Burns – Icarus Burns
    Self-released / Feather & Wax Records – 2025
    Rock, Metal, Prog, Post, Sludge, Psych, Stoner, Instrumental
    Rated: ****

    Berlin, Germany based four-piece Icarus Burns are about to release their debut album with the same name and which already made the January Doom Charts. And rightfully so, for the follow-up to the 2021 titleless EP comes fully formed and with grand ideas about what Icarus Burns should always be about. Their metal is rife with atmosphere and grand gestures. Fitting for a band and album inspired by myth. Fitting for a band who self-releases their album under a label named Feather & Wax Records, keeping perfectly in synch with their chosen band name. But where the myth spells doom for Icarus, the band never flies too close to the sun. They know exactly how far they can take their compositions, and how to perfectly blend the different genres. Expect their diverse and intense sound to house parts of post rock and metal as well as sludge and stoner. Progressive by default, the pulse and beat of what you hear in opening track Minotaur continues in following track Die Werft. Both riddled with rays of lights as well as menacing bursts of dirty thunder. The soothing ebb and flow beginning of following Melancholia is soon distorted by an even filthier rumble. A Distant Light / In The Darkness has minor echoes of bands you already adore, but because they keep their tones more metallic and the scope wider, those never soak the composition to much. Trännen der Sonne gives rise to moments of a more Floydian interpretation of metal, using doom touches and sludge tones to make you feel those tears fall down, before they become a heavy curtain.100 Days ends the fifty minute long instrumental metal mythos, offering an even more atmospheric and cinematic closer to all that already came before. With almost twelve minutes that one track houses everything Icarus Burns is about at this moment in time. Pandora’s Box has been opened and within it was no evil torment, but a love affair with legendary metal, transforming ancient inspiration into something dazzling and completely for our modern age. Where Icarus Burns will go from here seems entirely of their making, for they already seem to know how high they can fly…


    (Written by JK)




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    Da Beumb Project – Closer, Warmer

     

    Da Beumb Project – Closer, Warmer
    Self-released – 2025
    Punk, Stoner, Metal, Sludge, Grunge, Hardcore
    Rated: ****

    Released last Friday, the new full-sized album Closer, Warmer by Montréal, Québec, Canada duo Da Beumb Project. A volatile project that has been running since 2011 and has already delivered some six albums. And where we already loved their first fast-paced punk, all sludged and grunged up single Heck Yes. The opener Off With His Head is even wilder! Almost three minutes long, it is one of the longer songs on the album, the track delivers this gut punching, stop and stomp kind of energy. Highly addictive and the perfect battering ram to open the album with. Especially since things get even more frantic with Heck Yes and one mighty raucous Having A Laugh. Which leads to conclude there is always time for some Da Beumb Project, cause the nine tracks on Closer, Warmer only barely pass the twenty minute mark. The bass and drum duo knows where their forte lies, and that punk adagio, hardcore power smash is perfected with Good Boy Falls Down. No Country For Old Punks follows, love the title, slows down and turns into a warped sun-fried, brutish grunge dirge. Dark and nothing lighthearted until the very end, when an old announcer snippet turns your frown upside down. Eccentric, yes, surprising, absolutely! You better get used to it. With Da Beumb Project, surprises are rarely unexpected. Like ending the album with the longest track, three and a half minute long High Life. A sludge punk extravaganza, that slows down to give you a sweet and dusty send off.Da Beumb Project, punkcentric, but o’ so lovable!


    (Written by JK)




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    Ditch – The Traveler

     

     

    Ditch – The Traveler
    Dark Skies Coming – 2025
    Rock, Stoner
    Rated: ****

    There are those albums that seem to be in two minds about the direction they want to take. Unsure if they should follow their forte, do it all differently or go for the gusto. But that last route, is the new Ditch album The Traveler in tenfold. All of it! It boldly goes wherever adventure takes it. And for the most part, it goes the way of the ancestral stonerrock way, blistering hot, sun bleached sand ridden and dusted. Hints of metal, a bit of grunge, and a touch of prog do linger on its path, but The Traveler navigates around and through them like an expert. It’s been eleven years since their full-sized debut Boco Do Inferno was released. A wild ride that was, which did seem part ways with the drummer and vocalist a few years later. The current line-up, a trio now, still includes Eric Hazebroek on guitar and Douwe de Wilde as bassist and vocalist from the first incarnation. And still includes drummer Alexander de Goede, with whom they already released that Cold-Foot Alaska EP some four  years ago. So, I reckon the boys know exactly what they are doing and how they want to do it. Going about it meticulously and with final destinations in mind.

    The Traveler opens with a barrage of stoner rock tracks, you can feel the desert and the fuzz as Jabba’s guitar color sets the scene; the riffs take control and the crunching bass rattles. Jabba? Indeed! Does Ditch, with their album title, already allude to the musician and storyteller, the Traveler, also known as Fox or Idzuna from the Star Wars universe? Cause there are more Star Wars themed titles and lyrics to be found on the album. Either way, there might be a moment here and there when the lyrics feel a bit wookiee, err wonky. Those moments are beautifully offset by brilliant lines in tracks like Everyone I knowYear Of The Pig, The Bloody 9 and Broncola. It might also be because vocalist Douwe de Wilde might sound a bit less confident here or there, or because he has a different kind of timbre and pitch than usually the case with stoner rock. It is highly different compared to the vocalist on their debut Boca Do Inferno. Either way, it definitely keeps your ears peaked! There are a few background vocals by one Luuk Penterman from Sugartoosh and Premium & Marjan Welman from Autumn and Vetrar Draugurinn, and those are hitting the sweet spot. Especially on Year Of The Pig. One of the prize songs on the album. But Ditch manages to find them often, those sweet spots, either with atmospheric guitar off shoots, clomping drums and motoring bass work. Or with paying homage to the stonerrock of yore. By name or riff. It makes the new Ditch album an easy go-to record for the road, under the Desert Sun, or while mowing the lawn… Instead of Kyuss, putting Ditch on loud..


    (Written by JK)




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    Dark Skies Coming



    Bunsenburner – Reverie

     

     

    Bunsenburner – Reverie
    Self-released – 2025
    Rock, Metal, Stoner, Sludge, Doom, Jazz
    Rated: ***

    There are these dream sequences that remind you of long lost romantic moments and those will stay with you for the rest of time. And on this album there are a few instances that seem to waltz with those memories. Before they are brutally burned to a cinder by the experimental genre-defying metal that Bunsenburner delivers. The Freiburg Im Breisgau, Germany five-piece recorded their new album Reverie live during a manic four-day session at Huji Maja Studios in Freiburg Im Breisgau. Captivated by their earlier release Rituals we dove head first into their new vision, soon experiencing momentary flashes of pearly hallucinations and then having them turn into metallic nightmares. The Reverie gets shaken around violently and black metal signature seem to want to scorch whatever lingering feelings of euphoria might be there. Often coming across like a jam-band Avant La Lettre, the thirteen tracks carry many a riff and a multitude of landscapes. Landscapes that seem ridden with earthquakes and aftershocks but always returning to a momentary oasis of peace and tranquility. And therein lies the power of Bunsenburner, to heat things right up to the moment of boiling, to seek out the right amount of tremor and quake before tooling it all down to a pilot light, to a mesmerizing flame to stare into until you get lost in it…


    (Written by JK)




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    The Doom Charts for January 2025

     


    DOOM CHARTS

    JANUARY 2025

     

    Two albums diverged from heaviness
    And I am lucky I could journey with both
    And be a traveler, with no weariness
    Or suffer solitariness
    I could dive into all of the Doom Charts undergrowth…

    ~ adapted from The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

    Welcome to the first regular edition of the 2025 Doom Charts! Where we glance back at  January to hear what the first month of the new year brought us. Are you ready for another deluge of heaviness? We hope so! It’s been an amazing first month already, with 238 albums receiving votes this month. And we rarely have seen Numbers 1 and 2 this close together. Which meant we had to do them justice and provide two blurbs for Number 2 as well. And to make things even freakier, they’ve come out on the same label. Go check’m out. But be sure, to check all forty; they are all worthy of your attention! And do not hesitate to let us know which one you are missing! It might just be our new favorite record!


    The brand new, first edition of the new year!
    It's the First Friday of the new month, which means a new Doom Charts editon is here!
    The
    Doom Charts list to guide you through the maze...
    Go check out all Forty albums ready to set the Heavy Underground a blaze!


    Personal votes went out to: Dunes, Godzillionaire, ZOAHR, Hedonist, Land Mammal, T F N R S H, Plasticdrop, Motorik Road Trip, Icarus Burns, Fish Basket and many more that unfortunately did not make the list... Would have loved to have seen Hex by Sha-La-Lees make it...


    Welcome to Doom Charts, representing some of the finest bloggers, journalists, radio, podcasters and reviewers from the heavy underground around the globe.  Each month, our critics submit their picks for the best new doom, sludge, metal, stoner, psychedelic and heavy rock albums.  The results are compiled and tabulated into the chart below.  This is a one-stop shop for the best new albums in the world…