Hivelords

The debut full-length from Philadelphia's Hivelords is a study in heaviness. Their gut-ratting, doom-laden sludge prefers to disembowel rather than decapitate, playing with a particular brand of resonance aimed right at the listener's soft underbelly. With crackling, blackened edges and an unsettling, almost hallucinatory psychedelic quality, Cavern Apothecary does its best to discombobulate and unsettle. The vocals on opener "Atavus Lich" are unhinged and anguished from the first raw, dry rasp, made more desperate sounding by the occasional clean choral work in the background. The distorted chanting that begins "The Growing Overwhelm" suddenly breaks apart into a rocking, rancid groove that sourly crawls throughout the song. There's a shocking amount of malevolence packed into these five tracks, and many unexpectedly jagged edges that catch and slice deep.