Released: 2011
There's few things I like better than a good doom record, and Melbourne veterans Clagg know how to make really good doom records. With the first pressing sold out, Obsidian Records has re-released this in a slightly variant configuration, and fans of epic-scale riff thunder should rejoice. Lord of the Deep is like a vast submarine behemoth slowing uncoiling itself from the bottom of the sea and rising inexorably toward the surface, intent on crushing everything it finds, rather like the monstrocity detailed in Boyd Potts' typically disturbed artwork.
To give you some idea of the scope of this recording, its six songs sprawl across 67 minutes. The enormous opener "Carrion" takes almost five minutes to build up into its signature riff; at the six minute mark it shifts a gear into a nice mid-paced groove, then changes pace again further on as it spreads it murky tendrils across more than quarter of an hour of ultimate doom. "Lord of the Deep" emerges next, with a minute of feedbacking guitars then making way for a thunderous rumble that slows down so much into the third minute that it makes diSEMBOWELMENT sound like a speed metal band, and at the halfway mark it gets more glacial still. The word "epic" could have been invented to describe this track. "Buried" with its dirty guitars ups the tempo slighty, but it's still long enough for light from the Sun to reach the earth's surface before its over. And as huge as the riffs are in these songs, it's possible that "Devour the Sun" is even more immense as it too slowly grinds out over a ten-minute period. This new version concludes with a faithful cover of Iron Monkey's "Big Loader" that fits right in to Clagg's monstrously sludgy vision.
Lord of the Deep is an evil-sounding, gradually-unfurling picture of musical enormity, the perfect accompaniment to a gloomy afternoon rolling into a stormy evening.
1. Carrion
2. Lord of the Deep - i. They Dream Fire ii. At the Rising of the Storm
3. Buried
4. The Harvest
5. Devour the Sun
6. Big Loader
Rating: 90%
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