Following a lengthy dormancy, notorious doom derelicts GRAVES AT SEA returned in 2014 with This Place Is Poison, a 45rpm 12” EP including one new original and two Black Sabbath covers.
Tracked by drummer Bryan Sours (ex-Subarachnoid Space) and Steve Lobdell at Audible Alchemy and mastered by Ryan Foster at Foster Mastering on their home turf, Side A’s “This Place Is Poison” finds the all-consuming, slow-motion sludge for which the band is so synonymous flooding in with a torrent of crusted-over guitars anchored away by swampy bass rumbles and earth-rupturing drums all bathed in the howls and shrieks of the damned. But in shaking off their cobwebs, GRAVES AT SEA have emerged reanimated with a heretofore unheard speed, at least when compared to their syrupy crawl of the past.
On Side B, Black Sabbath’s “Orchid” and “Lord Of This World” get bold re-imaginings: “Orchid” is eroded beyond its essence into a morose march towards death while “Lord of This World” gets a grim reconfiguration with grisly riffs, bilious hisses and a blackened atmosphere that takes the original to a dark, desolate realm of desperation and despair.
Limited to 1000 copies, the EP is pressed on 140-gram black wax in black inner sleeve with a standard metallic gold on black jacket and one-sided metallic gold on black insert with an included download code. [Eolian Empire]