Favorite Albums of the Year 2023 If you are a purveyor of music review sites, you've undoubtedly learned to skip over the fluff that constitutes AOTY intros. T he pointlessness of writing this isn't lost on me, let alone the fact that this is a list for, erm, the wrong year. In the music industry churn, an album released last year might as well be a million years old. Obsolete. Irrelevant. Forgotten. So: w hy 2023? Why not 2024, like unto a proper music review website? What's the rationale behind publishing this list a whole damn year late? There are two reasons. The first is that I think demo ..read more

REVERED AND REVILED ABOVE ALL OTHERS - Officers Down (Mini-Review) In the spirit of today's band in question, let's keep this intro short, shall we? is a lean and mean two-track release from Revered and Reviled Above All Others , a historically lung-crushing doomviolence band. Over the past few years, I have personally found their intense and unique combination of suffocating brevity and overt fuck-the-police messaging to be quite alluring. If you're unfamiliar with (the henceforth abbreviated)  , the title of this double single should tell you all you need to know. If, however, you're ap ..read more

VEXING HEX - Solve Et Coagula (Review) the debut album by Indianapolis’s very own , you can imagine my excitement upon hearing they’ve finally cooked up a follow up. was very much a spooky doom metal-meets-psychedelic/classic rock outing that often finds itself compared to the likes of hitting the surface several years later. The same stylistic grounding is very much present, but I’m glad to say it’s also derivative. Mainly, the slower, doom-cladded riffing is a little more relaxed here in exchange for more blatant rock ‘n roll numbers that have a poppy front. Layers upon layers of synth ..read more

Welcome back, dear readers, to another track premiere! Pull up a chair, take off your boots. Get comfortable. Forget your worries. Stay a while. sounds familiar, it may be because we slumbering scribes refuse to shut up about them. Indeed, we're doing everything in our power to make sure you know what's up at all times. a few weeks back, and now, after firmly establishing myself as a fanboy, we're ​honored to premiere their second single ahead of its release this Friday, March 29th. Entitled "The Good Life," this track demonstrates the band's right-out-of-the-gate willingness  to sho ..read more

After a week of genre-hopping, it's high time for us slumbering scribes to return to our roots. That's right, folks: we're firing up some doom. More specifically, some long-form riff-centric darkly occult doom, courtesy of Italian doom mountaineers  is, well, their third outing, and I'm firmly of the opinion that it is their best work yet. With one organ-heavy intro followed by four thick tracks, this album is built on a solid bedrock of droning monolithic riffs and a notably dragged-from-the-crypt vocal style. The whole affair feels ritualistic and borderline hypnotic--some of these ..read more

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What, dear reader, is more classically and quintessentially Sleeping Village Reviews behavior than dropping a review for an album that came out more than 12 months ago? I mean, come on. This is embarrassing. We slumbering scribes are notoriously--and demonstrably--bad at finishing stuff we started, but instead of letting this half-completed writeup die in the drafts, I thought it would be worthwhile to revisit and finally complete. Needless to say, I apologize to for the extreme tardiness. This album is very good and merited a more prompt review. I n any case, better late than never, I suppose ..read more

A few months back, in inevitably lost to the sands of time, I discussed the unique honor of witnessing a band release their very first song. One lone track can say a lot about a band's intentions and potential, and in today's case, I'm primed and ready to see what comes next in the world of hardcore doomsters  . Their first song "Sun Stain" has been on rotation this past week here at ye olde Sleeping Village, and if a singular track is keeping my attention over multiple days, it is, in my book, certainly worth writing about. lean into overtly dynamic composition, demonstrating sludgy heft ..read more

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Given our newfound sense of productivity here at our humble slumbering township,  it is high time, methinks, to bring back a frequently forgotten Sleeping Village feature. That's right, dear reader. It's time once more for ot a review per se, nor an album announcement, but rather a third secret thing that lurks awkwardly betwixt the two. Today, we gaze towards what appears to be the second full length from Brazilian stoned doomsters  . I heard (and quite enjoyed) their debut album released last year, which served as a collection of loose singles and EPs dropped throughout 2023. The b ..read more