- Country: USA
- Style: Sludge metal / Black metal
- Label: Profound Lore Records
- Release date: 25 March 2016
Nothing about Slow Forever is small. It’s a double album of dusty, bruising, wide-open American metal, and the arrival of new vocalist Charlie Fell gives Erik Wunder’s songs a feral new edge.
“Hunt the Buffalo” opens like a stampede, all dirt-caked riffs and Fell barking like a man about to snap. “Beast Whip” keeps the fists flying, while “King Rust” takes its time, grinding through sludgy, heavy-lidded passages before snapping into black metal fury.
Wunder’s multi-instrumental work holds it all together, and the whole thing sounds organic and unified. Shorter cuts like “Animal Law” and “Iconoclast” work as sharp jabs between the long, heavy pieces, and the later stretch, from “Elephant Graveyard” through to the title track, is darker and more patient.
Is it too long? In places, yes, and a couple of the mid-length tracks in the first half could have been trimmed without anyone missing much. But the sprawl is part of the point. This is a record that wants you to sit with it, to let the riffs wear grooves into you, and it rewards that patience. Very few records that year sounded this lived-in, this ugly and this oddly beautiful at the same time.
Best tracks:
Hunt the Buffalo
Beast Whip
King Rust
Elephant Graveyard
Slow Forever
Author’s rating: 8.8/10
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