Principia Sardonica

You've got to be totally dedicated to the Tao of Deathly Dooom to stomach this slab of death-themed doom metal. These guys - I'm still not really sure if they are a duo or a trio as the drumming is credited to one "?!", that's what it says on the CD sleeve - play funereal-paced minimalist doom that reeks of decay, stinking mud and icky crawling mutant algae. Guitars tones are way, waaay deep and fuzzy as if the moss on the strings is interfering with the pick-up, and the riffs are so drawn-out and extended they barely hang together. Individual songs are hard to identify as the riffs are not very memorable and the rhythms are extremely sluggish. A wacky out-of-tune cymbal which might actually be a garbage bin lid, encrusted at critical spots with mould, in disguise gets banged a lot throughout this recording and might well be the only thing in this whole murky muck to make any impression on numbed brain cells. If there's anything else that, er, stands out, it would have to be guitarist Joseph J Fogarazzo's extreme down-tuned vocals which resemble stones and boulders grinding small hapless and lovable hamsters in a giant monster bird's gizzard. Your average death metal grunter is as an eight-year old piping choirboy next to this man so forget about trying to follow the singing, and if you happen to be reading the printed lyrics in the CD sleeve while the album is playing, you can forget about singing along.

The best track on the album is the all-instrumental "Phases of Death", a sonic atrocity exhibition detailing the death process and one of only two or three tracks featuring any percussion that travels faster than a snail doped up to the eyeballs. It sounds as much death metal as it does doom due to the low gravelly sound and the drumming which can be machine-like in places and it is less repetitive than the other tracks (parts of it may have been improvised) though it does seem to wander aimlessly. Another track of note is the 15-minute long " "Possession" " which also meanders a lot and features more of those rumbling brontosaurian vocals and that batty cymbal.

This frightful stomach-churner extends the doom metal genre to an extreme (and very lethargic!) minimalism where each doom element, as in guitar riffs, plodding rhythms, vocals and repetition among other things, is almost deconstructed. For this reason, it would be a pity if you don't try to listen to the album all the way from start to finish at least once - maybe after hearing a few tracks several times to get used to the style - and in its own sick way, it's very funny and may very well become a cult recording. The singing in particular is manic and if you had to improve it, I would suggest having a choir of dinosaurs singing at different low pitches or put reverb on Fogarazzo's vocals to get an even sicker effect.

And if all this is not enough, Rigor Sardonicous have dedicated this twisted and lunatic album to ... THEMSELVES!!! How much sicker can they get?!