Lowered Head - Lowered Head

Ohio’s blackened funeral doom/sludge project Lowered Head is from Ben Vanweelden, the same musician involved with Venomous Echoes, Ceremonic Buryment, Wallow, and Axiom Chaos.  

Just when I thought I'd heard the most miserable, heaviest doom albums this year, Lowered Head comes along and drops this beastly self-titled debut. This is nearly 46 minutes of some of the most despondent, depressing, and abrasive doom metal I’ve found in this second half of the year.  

The vocals sound inhuman: a primal mixture of desperation, frustration, any other negative human emotion that can be dredged up from the psyche. If I stuck my head down into a pile of mixed glass and rocks and began inhaling, the resulting situation of dying in bloody asphyxiation might sound something like Ben’s vocal performance. It’s blackened but it’s also something else, like another dimension of pain.

The production is perfect for this type of sickening doom, raw and with a live feel but not in such a way that the vibrancy of the darkness doesn’t get to emanate its waves straight into the ears, and into the brain where it shatters the consciousness.  

“Never Enough,” opens with sludgy doom riffs that are just disgustingly corrosive. There is an atmosphere to the song that hangs in the air, a constant buzz of torment that is maddening. I really like the drums too, cleverly accenting the riffs at the right moments just to throw a dim light on things that are not seen, only heard. The middle passage is droning, the psychosis hanging in the air before a burst of blackened speed tunnels its way through. Several of the drum parts here are surprisingly catchy too.

“Like A Noose,” is freakish and unnerving with its long intro of tones that might not be of this plain of existence. The guitar is sparse, picking its way through through the darkness before, alongside the bass, it lays down a suffocating patch of notes. The blackened vocals are clawing, the elements working together to bring extreme elements while the atmosphere carries this deep, ambient tone that is just as potent. Alongside the final song, “The Crawling,” this is my favorite song on the album.

“Cutting” is a slow bleed-out with a somewhat foggy beginning before everything flows freely. But it’s a slow flow, each second another cut on the body, releasing more and more of the insides. This just might be the most oppressively heavy of the songs, no light at all permeating through this foundation of sweltering darkness.

Clean tones open up “Decomposed Friends,” but clean doesn’t always mean bright or pretty and, of course, those are not adjectives used to describe this song’s intro. The drums build up the tension: deep and pounding but steady like fear instead of bombastic like violence. What might be considered a void-like sense of melody makes an appearance before Ben screams his way through a slow grind. The tempo picks up in a subtle way and before I knew it, the fear that was after me catches up. There is an art to making a song steadily rise without it being obvious—Ben absolutely nails it here. 

“Crawling,” is a stark example of just how bleak this album is–and low doom can go when it truly embraces everything that it is. I just love how slow and long this song is, a true doom song for true doom fans. It isn’t really built on an actual structure or riffs but instead with tones and horror.

All in all, Lowered Head's debut album is a journey that is worth taking, even though every step is wrought with the unseemly. For doom fans, that's perfect but to others: you've been warned. 

Rating: Excellent