ninehertz

Finland's doom scene is a grimy place, a natural home for sludge to wallow, in the country renowned for pushing metal into weird and horrible places. Taser and Stain are great examples, and have teamed up for a one song each split 7".

Taser have form in splits - check out their pairing with Frogskin from pre-Covid if you get chance. Their track, Waste Meat is frenzied, faster than you'd expect, thrashing and flailing around without a care, the vocals channelling Mike Williams, the sheer rawness of it a clear nod to the early Eyehategod days, desperate and grimy sludge played by down and out punks.

Stain are similarly a familiar name through an earlier split release, then with Peine Kapital. This is sludge of a pace more traditional, and then taken to the funeral extreme. It is painfully, achingly slow, so turgid you feel its decrepit-ness in your bones, sludge from the grave, trying to crawl through the dirt out from the ground, zombified music that sounds disgusting, the lack of pace meaning you have to look it in the face throughout, no escape. It is, to be clear, glorious.

Both bands offer prime sludge, how you want it to sound, even with the slight variety offered between the two. And it is exactly what we've come to expect of the genre in the Finnish scene