Sludge Rock & Beyond

Sleep sounds like a wonderful idea right now. Not the act of slumber, mind you, but the bowel-rumbling sludge-metal classicism of the band Sleep. They're joined by other sinister, Black Sabbath-worshipping fiends of yesterday and today, including the snarling Melvins, the boot-scooting Spirit Caravan, and the magma-moving Isis.

So you've been sucked into this whole sludge business, succumbing to a cavalcade of down-tuned riffs, roaring vocals, and overbearing basslines? Up Next, then, is the delightfully trashy space-rock of Monster Magnet; the expansive, scorched-desert duality of Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age; and the percussive/concussive tempests of Karp.

Here's hoping your eyes are wide shut right now, because your ears are about to be assaulted by the deep-underground tracks below. Fu Manchu is all cowbells and bravado, Weedeater is chemically enhanced, Earth is slow-burning instrumental music for the truly demented, and Montreal's Priestess unleashes demonic sonic bliss.

By exhuming the tar pits of heavy metal forefathers Black Sabbath, our harbingers of sludge rock and its many subgenres create their own ferment of ominous, sweeping, and absurdly loud sounds out from the deepest recesses of their sleepwalking minds. By observing every tectonic plate shift, we're immediately engrossed in a world where guitars are engulfed by fireballs; where bassists register on the Richter scale; and where the end appears to truly be near, but we somehow feel mighty fine.