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, boot-scooting Spirit Caravan, and magma-moving contemporaries Pelican, Mastodon, and 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 legendary Sabbath/'70s rock bastard child Pentagram, and the expansive, scorched-desert duality of Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age.

Here's hoping your eyes are wide shut right now, allowing your ears to be assaulted and tantalized by the deep-underground tracks below. Alabama Thunderpussy comes Southern-fried like Skynyrd, Fu Manchu is all cowbells and bravado, Bongzilla and Weedeater are chemically enhanced, and Earth is slow-burning instrumental music for the truly demented.

By exhuming the tar pits of heavy metal forefathers Black Sabbath, our harbingers of sludge rock and its many subgenres bring their own spin 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 tip the Richter scale, and where the end appears to truly be near, but we somehow feel mighty fine.