Photo by Wolf with a Camera

Opium Lord hails from a small industrial town in England’s Black Country. Located just outside Birmingham (which is basically ground zero for heavy metal’s blighted beginnings), the UK’s most Tolkienesque locale is best known for its cold-smudged industrial history, and was once described as a “dismal region of mines and forges.” Suffice it to say, it sounds like the perfect place to write a nasty, corroded doom record, and Opium Lord did exactly that for their Candlelight Records debut. Its warped, sickening riffs lurch to and fro, roiling beneath a vocalist wholly intent on purging bile. Opium Lord’s take on sludge is a direct descendent of countrymen Iron Monkeys’ interpretation of the Southern staple; there’s no swampy swagger here, just crushing misanthropic heaves and painful retches that would make Dixie Dave blanch. It’s as bleak as a Northern winter, and the aural equivalent of that leaden weight that forms in the pit of your stomach once you realize that the temperature’s falling, the snow is starting to settle, and you still can’t pay your heating bill.

The Calendrical Cycle: Eye of Earth is out soon via Candlelight Records.

Kim Kelly is a fan of drug-oriented heavy metal, and is also on Twitter – @grimkim.