We take a deep dive to unearth some great bands wading through the marshes.
There ain’t no ground like the underground, and, dear friends, I’m relieved to say it’s thriving. There’s more happening on your local heavy music scene than you might realise, and it’s nice to shine a light on local heroes from time to time. That’s the beauty of the underground scene – your knowledge of what’s happening isn’t going to come from your usual outlets.
Chances are you’ve been sharing notes with your buddies at the day job (like me), or you’ve unwittingly been having what you thought was going to be a quiet drink at the pub when a four-piece start to thrash the makeshift stage. Either way, there’s new music out there, and I’ve had my ear to the ground for bands who dare to be different, who know how to get hard and heavy but aren’t afraid to shake the shackles of restraint and stray onto more enigmatic paths. It keeps the scene exciting, don’t you think?
Turtle Skull
Hippies playing doom metal, Turtle Skull have redefined what it means to cross genres, establishing their own category, ‘flower doom’. The Sydney outfit blend a lot of fuzz, some jammy stoner doom and some ethereal heaviness to merge the light with the ecstatic. The band have a new single coming out next month from their upcoming sophomore album, a release of which Turtle Skull have said has been a more considered process than their debut offering.
Alchemy
Guts, gore, grind, and grizzle, Alchemy have their roots in brutal black metal but blend their palette of sounds to represent the best of many worlds. In May this year, Alchemy released their debut EP, Infinite Forms of Torture, a release that’s absolutely guaranteed to slice you up with its gnarly ways and brutal rhythms. You get this kind of sensation of queasiness when you listen to the EP’s title track, but any band that’s able to stir up such sensations with just one track is one that’s doing a pretty solid job in my humble opinion.
Mountain Wizard Death Cult
New music, new merch, new horizons; more sludge and doom seeping up from the surface upon which you tread, this time from Mountain Wizard Death Cult. There’s something eerily attractive about how these guys perform, and you’ll know what I mean if you take a listen to the band’s debut single, ‘Eye of the Sun’. Out on the road supporting Astrodeath all this month, there’s plenty of opportunity to pick up what Mountain Wizard Death Cult are throwing down, wherever you may be.
