From Slomatics and Elder Druid, to War Iron and Astralnaut, Northern Ireland is responsible for some of the finest, most thoroughly crushing sludge-doom around. Perhaps most decimating of all are Nomadic Rituals. Comprising Craig Carson, Peter Hunter and Mark Smyth, we last heard from the Belfast band back in 2017, circa the release of their “sludgy, space-evoking, cosmos-atomising” second album, Marking the Day. Three years and one reality-mangling pandemic on, the band are back with news of their third full-length, TIDES. Recorded, once again, by Niall Doran at Start Together Studios, the six-track release is headed with the typically pulverizing ‘Them’, which you can stream…
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When talk first began of a sequel to ‘Troublegum’, the 1994 punk-metal opus that made legends of Co. Antrim trio Therapy?, your writer couldn’t help but feel pangs of uncertainty. From a band that over the course of 25 years plowed a fiercely independent furrow, and did so while thinking about ten steps ahead of the musical sentiment of the time, a move for nostalgia would be surely a massive anti-climax after producing two career-defining albums in ‘Crooked Timber’ and ‘A Brief Crack of Light’. Is it? Well… the jury is still out after a fortnight’s constant listening, which, for…