gog

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Aquarius Records
gOg Noriah Mills (Sounds Of Battle And Souvenir Collecting) cd-r
Every once in a while we’ll get a disc in the mail, that has us intrigued before we’ve even heard it. Take Gog for instance. Well, to begin with, they’re called Gog. Or so we believed. The cover wasn’t entirely clear. They could have been called Sounds Of Battle And Souvenir Collecting, which is just as intriguing. The cover art is kind of trippy, a little bit spacey, still no sure sign of what was in store musically. So we tossed it on, and wow, nice, some sort of soft drifting shimmer, like signing bowls, bowed metal, deep resonant chiming over a thick soft backdrop of deep dark ambience. Another perfect late night drift record we’re thinking, when all of a sudden the 21 minute long second track kicks in and holy shit, suddenly we’re in a whole ‘nother place, and it’s not nearly so pretty and tranquil. A huge Earth 2 like riff, sprawled out and massive, a glacial low end crush, churning, downtuned and buzzing, each chord pulsing and throbbing, just as suddenly, some strangely beautiful melodies surface, and start drifting right along side the main slow motion riff, and suddenly it’s both epic AND lovely, pretty, but ominously heavy, underneath, all manner of murky sounds swirl and whirl, a constantly shifting sea of drones and muted underwater FX, then again Gog knock us on our asses when the drums finally kick in at about the 10 minute mark, and the song transforms into some sort of lumbering sludge doom behemoth, the cymbals sizzling way up in the mix, the drums pounding, the riff more corrosive and harsh, monstrous and massive doom metal that unfurls even as it launches into action, subtly blissing out, until Gog’s doom is heavily laced with My Bloody Valentine fuzziness and the sunburst blown out beauty of bands like the Angelic Process and Nadja. An gorgeously blinding blast of sludgy brilliance.
Crucial Blast
gOg Noriah Mills cd-r
I received a copy of Noriah Mills a couple of months ago in the mail, which ended up in my eternally overflowing oil drum of demos, promos, and similiar gifts before I ever had a chance to hear it. Actually, there wasn't any information included with the CD, nothing to indicate what they were all about, and so I made the foolish assumption that it was going to be yet another horrendous stoner rock demo or self-released emo rock opus that seem to infest the Crucial Blast PO Box on a daily basis. It wasn't until a bit later that I accidently stumbled across a myspace page for Gog, and was a) flattened by the sounds of some amazingly huge ambient sludge tones and b) caught staring face-to-face with the album cover of the CD that I had so presumptuously ignored. Call it providence, 'cuz this CD is awesome. I still don't know a damn thing about them though, an exploration to their website reveals little more than cryptic references to biblical giants and some boss streaming audio, and the album packaging for Noriah Mills is pretty abstract, inscribed with trippy, psychedelic photo-manipulations and mysterious poetry. The first track 'Hovering Lake' glides in on a bed of soft, resonant ambience and prayer bowl tones, softly vibrating feedback moving wavelike through dark space, dreamy and meditative, reminding me alot of Troum. Very nice, exactly the sort of thing I like to have drifting off of my stereo speakers at 3 a.m. in the morning when I'm busy banging away at my keyboard. But then the second track 'Noriah Mills" appears, a leviathan riff, monstrously heavy and fuzzy, that floats through space in extreme slow motion, repeating itself over and over, the crashing of distant cymbals ringing through the buzz. Like Earth meets Corrupted, huge and spacious and crushing, the stray notes, quatic electronics, eternally growling amp feedback and buzzing strings forming quasi-melodies that hover around those monstrous chords. And then when the drums really kick in after about 10 minutes, the riff shifts gears and becomes a pulverizing, lumbering doom-dirge, with more and more layers of distortion and effects building and clinging to the riff, until it becomes obliterated in a blissed out wash of shoegazey blast of fuzz. A powerful slab of melodic, Metallic drone, fits right in between the new Nadja stuff and Earth and the supernova whiteout of The Angelic Process.
Random Review: Past the deepest gate
The Invaders Have a Search Beam ..... yes. HOLY GOG I had to put on some headphones and let my brain bleed out as the blackness decimated anything in its path - running for my life as sightless invaders obliterated the landscape! In fact, that whole CD feels like that and the final song sees the invaders sitting on a fucking throne of smoking skulls!
Aquarius Records:
Gog, Past the deepest gate
Gog is definitely one of our favorite modern purveyors of droning doomic filth. From the massive downtuned multiple o'd doom of Noriah Mills to the more abstract but no less heavy split with Apparatia (the one with the metal cover we just reviewed, only a few copies left), it's as if Gog the man is on some hell-bent mission to explore the foulest pits of hell and dredge up the crustiest, doomiest, ugliest, foulest sonic ooze in existence. And we're fully supportive of this endeavor, as we're the ones who benefit. We're the ones with an insatiable appetite for all things grimy and sludgy, slow and low and heavy heavy heavy.... We got this slab of black ambient brutality at the same time we got the split, but we only got a fraction of the copies we requested since this one is already out of print. We have about fifteen of these in stock, so be prepared to leave empty handed, but at least the most fleet fingered amongst you doom obsessed will leave here with a big sick grin and an earful pockets full of oozing black beauty. Four tracks, about a half hour, the opener is a stone cold black ambient doom classic, thick glacial slabs that shift and growl, pulse and throb, blown out and distorted, crumbling and overdriven, heavy and thick, but seeming to decay before our very ears. A gorgeous melancholy melody rendered in black tar and allowed to melt in the hot sun, clogging your ears and speakers. The rest of the disc is not so distorted, a bit more tranquil, but with hints of the doom metal that lurks just below the surface, thick swirling washes of rumbling crumbling whir, chunks of fragmented riffs, doused in reverb and sent spinning into the ether, dense foghorn like swells, crazy hyper delayed and dubbed out squalls of hiss and static, snippets of distant percussion, whirring soft shimmer, all slowed down and smeared into glacial black blurs, settling at the bottom of your speakers like some sort of hellish doomdrone silt. Awesome. And again, already out of print, only 15 copies or so in stock, once these are gone that's it.
GOG / APPARATIA split (Sounds Of Battle And Souvenir Collecting) cd-r 15.98
The return of the peculiarly monickered Gog, a one man practitioner of the dark musical arts, able to whip up huge swaths of drifting droney shimmer as easily as a crushing avalanche of corrosive slow motion riffage. More often than not some glorious grey area right in the middle. Here Gog is teamed up with the unknown to us Apparatia, who proves to be a worthy match up. Gog begins the proceedings with a 25 minute epic, blown out and buzzy, recorded SUPER hot and way in the red, a strange creepy soundscape of metallic clang, and huge reverbed guitar, not riffing, just sort of shimmering and vibrating, everything suspended amidst a barren sprawl of decay and delay, until everything explodes, and the track is transformed into an impossibly distorted, barely moving glacial wall of sound, the production so hot, the speakers seem on the verge of collapse, a massive spacious dirge that like other Gog stuff, manages to be lovely amidst all those jagged edges and crumbling chaos. Partway through, the guitars blur into just a long stretch of distorted whir, while beneath, the bass and drums continue to plod along, a strange slowed down groove buried beneath roiling clouds of fuzz. Gog finishes off his half the split with a little minute or so long chunk of random sound, peppered with vocals, a haunting little fragment of creepy ambience. Apparatia are in fact a grim buzzing black metal behemoth, who right out of the gate, first song, launch into some seriously grim blasting, super distorted and ultra sick, the vocals a demonic croak, the guitars a blurry buzz, the drums another static roar buried in the mix. But the band do mix it up, weaving haunting clean guitar interludes, with the harsh super affected vocals crooning hellishly over the top. Raw and primitive, and gloriously intense and brutal, the vocals and guitars in a constant battle of the buzz, the recording quality sort of damaged and lo-fi, making for some Faxed Head like audio damage. Pretty fucking cool for sure. Definitely need to hear more from these guys. But for now, this is a seriously killer one two punch, one part slow motion sludge, one part grim, buzzing fury. AMAZING PACKAGING. A printed sheet of metal, black on silver, super heavy, like the music inside, text and images affixed to the back, the cd housed in a black and silver metallic paper sleeve, with mysterious blurred images and liner notes. Sticker on the front, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!! Each one hand numbered. We got 40 and that's it. Once these are gone, we will not be able to get more...