Release Date: June 01st 2024. Record Label: Self Released. Formats: DD
Dark Sun Festivities: Tracklisting
1.Queen Of Solstice 08:53
2.Dystopiate Haze 07:13
3.Our Pigs WIll Drink Your King's Blood 08:27
4.A Shrine Of Salt 05:46
5.Slowly We Drone 08:55
Review
Sludge/Drone/Doom Metal collective Catapult The Sun return with their new EP Dark Sun Festivities where the atmospheric tones are buried under a ton of Drone based SLUDGE rubble with the band adding haunting and eerie soundbytes along the way. There’s a sense of twisted menace with Catapult The Sun taking inspiration from bands such as BONGRIPPER with it’s bleak and distorted vision that emanates across the whole Drone/Doom Metal platform.
There’s a vicious LOW & SLOW approach with Catapult The Sun adding elements of punishing Sludge Metal and Post-Metal rhythms. The EP has small amounts of Psychedelic tension slowly building up in the background with the down tuned and heavy Ambient themes that have a sullen muscular sound that can be quite experimental at times.
The gloomy creative journey begins with the hard-edged and equally haunting opening track Queen of Solstice where Catapult The Sun takes time to slowly perfect musical dominance which is down to the multitude of different LOW & SLOW progressive instrumental techniques that are employed here. There’s brief glimpses into SONIC based Post-Rock delivery but this EP is mostly powered by a nightmarish and pounding SLUDGE METAL backdrop which only becomes more DRONE based with each passing moment.
There’s no moments of uplifting instrumental passages with Catapult The Sun happily remaining within the darker vortex of the music they expertly create throughout the whole thirty nine minutes runtime of the EP. Catapult The Sun once again take sounds influenced by the likes of Electric Wizard, Black Sabbath, BONG and SUNN 0))) which they did on their previous releases.
However, this time round, the music has a sense of urgency especially within the Psychedelic Sludge Metal grooves that appear exactly at the right time for this EP to reach deafening levels of Amplifier Distortion and Heaviness.
The tracks that make up Dark Sun Festivities are equally as good as each other but things do take a gloomier and violent turn within the bass heavy tracks of Our Pigs Will Drink Your King’s Blood and Slowly We Drone. The raw-sounding production values allows Catapult The Sun to play a more manic and unpredictable style of LOW & SLOW obsessive sounding instrumental rhythms which ventures further into the Psychedelic Sludge world with high amounts of sonic manipulation giving this EP a slight industrial feel.
Dark Sun Festivities is another sublime release from Catapult The Sun who impress yet again with their dark violent take on Instrumental Doom/Sludge Metal which has a sense of aggressive originality appearing on the later stages of the record.
Excellent and Highly Recommended.
Words by Steve Howe
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