Wednesday, 27 August 2025

South Korean Sludge/Doom Miserists GAWTHROP Announce Crushing Debut Album


Sentient Ruin is proud to announce that Seoul’s Gawthrop are about to return to reconsign the sub-genre of sludge metal to its most resplendent and burdensome form with their forthcoming debut album "Kuboa", a monumental death and doom-scarred feedback-worshiping monstrosity that will stomp, crush and flatten the listener to death.

"Kuboa" has been teased by the always poignant extreme metal blog Toilet ov Hell, who in premiering the band’s new single “Hogweed” have remarked how Gawthrop “take you back to those first and second waves of sludge, when it all felt impossible and titanic, a form of as-yet unknown enmity and antipathy that touches something substratal in your sense of self“ - you can check out the track below


The enigmatic South Korean amplifier-torture cult known as Gawthrop had already given the world a glimpse into their cryptic auditory horror through 2019’s self-titled and 2022’s "Jumbo" demo tapes (both remastered and re-released by Sentient Ruin as the "Deterioration" vinyl LP compilation in 2023), but what awaits the listener on the band's first official full-length offering titled is something so wretched and crushing that it will test the composure and impressionability of even the most unfazed skeptics. 


Across its grueling thirty six minutes "Kuboa" unravels a suffocating burial of down-tuned auditory nihilism that will leave both die hard fans of sludge/doom and extreme metal enthusiasts in general alike in awe and overcome by the ghastly payload of absolute slow-crawling death they've just been crushed by. The legacy of pillars of the genre like Corrupted, Noothgrush, Coffins, and Meth Drinker lives on through seven epochal and genre-defining slabs of all-devouring subsonic auditory torment that restore sludge/doom to its most iconic and crowning glory.

Kuboa" is slated for a September 19 2025 release on LP, CD, MC and digital formats worldwide via Sentient Ruin, with all formats and a brand new spread of on-demand merch now available for pre-order via all our channels.

Links


Thanks to Sentient Ruin for the details.