Riff Of The Week: Sludge Edition
*hits blunt*
Before we enter the log bog, let’s take a look at what happened on last week’s 2009 Edition. Napalm Death went all out and took down the comp with approx 1/3 of the vote proving anarchy is a timeless community pas(s)time.
This week we asked for sludgy riffs, here’s what you sent in…
Richter
Vanitas – “Sanctuary” (Riff @ 5:35)
Vanitas is a young and ever-shifting entity. They play a bit of black metal, a bit of doom, a bit of sludge, and on this split with Chaste they come at all three from some severely fucked up angles. I’m expecting great things from them in the future; and also few if any votes, because you people are surely fucked up–but not fucked up enough.
Hans
Cephalic Carnage – ‘Piecemaker’ (Riff @ 0:46)
Guess you could debate whether this is supposed to be Stoner Rock or Sludge, but there’s no denying that CC are pretty good at spoofing genres outside their own (also see the brilliantly titled “Dying Will Be The Death Of Me” off the same album). Riff actually starts at the start, but it’s so much more satisfying at 0:46 when the song really gets going.
GoatForest
Eyehategod “Serving Time in the Middle of Nowhere” (Riff @ 0:41)
You all know what’s up.
Howard Deanzig
Alice in Chains – “Sludge Factory” (Riff @ 0:00)
Did you expect anything less from the Deanzig? One of the heaviest riffs off of their darkest album. This is a colossus. The entire S/T album sounds like an overdose but crikey does this one sound especially painful and degrading.
Ellipsis
Pelican – ‘Drought’ (Riff @ 0:00)
Let the slow crawl of a dry desolation consume you in its wake…
Spear
Northless – ‘Cold Migration’ (Riff at 0:00)
Every Northless riff is a monument to desolation, the opening to “Cold Migration” particularly so. That chromatic crawl down the bottom two frets turns the song’s melancholy to bitter spite, a feeling compounded by oppressive distortion. This is frigid and bleak, gritty and heavy, the purest essence of sludge.
Yarnhawk
Baroness – ‘The Birthing’ (Riff @ 1:30)
Old school Baroness was chocked full of sludgey, fun, good times, and this is one of those riffs they just gets me grooving. No matter where I am, when that guitar kicks in, my booty is set to shaking.
DeathToFalseMetal
Eyehategod – ‘Broken Down But Not Locked Up’ (Riff @ 0:53)
This was probably my hardest pick for ROTW seeing as how I love my sludge. I bounced back and forth between a few but ultimately decided on EHG. Only because every time I THINK someone will send in a certain bands riff in, everyone else thinks the same thing and it ends up not being on there. So! This week I said fuck it and went with my first gut choice. Here ya go fuckers! Don’t let me down by sending 100 EHG riffs this week.
Next week I’m combining a suggestion from HD and a thread we had in the group last week. Your riff has to come from a single released in the year of your birth.
Obviously we can’t verify if the year is legitimate, but we can check if the song was released as a single, so don’t try and pull a swifty on us.
Submission details below.
