Opium Lord - Vore - Download (2019)

Labels: Sludgelord
Review by: Alex Deller

Have a copy of Opium Lord’s ‘Calendrical Cycle’ LP from a few years back and thought it was pretty solid, but this one really takes things to the next level. While ‘Vore’ might be doom at its dark and wizened core, there’s so much else going on that to reduce them to a single genre seems like a cruel disservice. The album charts a strange and difficult course … one that takes in blackened hostility, post-hardcore jaggedness and what seem like miles of bleak, blistered open space. This means that while you might leap in for the vast riffs and spluttering vocals there’s plenty more to ensnare you, particularly if you enjoy the off-kilter heaviness of Starkweather, Will Haven and Khanate as much as you do the twisted sludge hell of Iron Monkey.