lurking at the bottom of the murky depths

Earth(1) - Pentastar in the Style of Demons(2) - favorite track: "Crooked Axis for String Quartet"
Sleep - Jerusalem - favorite track: it's just one hour-long song split into five tracks(3)
John Cale - Sun-Blindness Music - favorite track: "Summer Heat"(4)
Swans - Children of God(5) - favorite track: "In My Garden"
Skullflower(6) - Last Shot at Heaven - favorite track: "Dufus"
Grey Daturas/Monarch - Dawn of the Catalyst (split EP)(7) - favorite track: "Golden tusk of the Endearing" by Grey Daturas
Melvins(9) - Hostile Ambient Takeover- no real favorite track

and for this afternoon

Nurse With Wound - Soliloquy for Lilith (discs 1-3) - just for the clarifying effect of those sinister oscillators.

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(1) Earth was original name of Black Sabbath. The Earth here is the Seattle group that formed in the late 80's
(2) One of the best album titles ever, perfectly befitting half cheeky/half serious way that Earth approaches this kind of music. It is interesting that they are considered the standard bearers of stoner rock in that I'm half convinced that they have been parodying it since their inception.
(3) This has been since released in its full single-track form under the original name "Dopesmoker" though the band has said to prefer this version.
(4) This the more VU offering bookended by two blistering slabs of La Monte Young droney excess. I never have quite figured out what I think of John Cale. I want to love his stuff but I never really do. He always seems to be missing some small key element that would make whatever he's doing perfect.
(5) I love this album. It is so saturated with equal measures of contempt and longing for a devotional vehicle.
(6) Skullflower was discovered (by me anyway, I'm sure someone else was aware of it before I was) in a batch of metal CD's sent to me ages ago. Here is my review of their equally powerful Orange Canyon Mind.
(7) Heavvvvvvy. This is the kind of atmospheric ragged doom metal I would want to make, were I to make some. And I am laying claim to the doom metal name "Bathynomus"(8) in case I ever get around to it. My first album would likely be named Abyss Ritual, should that need to be claimed as well.
(8) Bathynomus giganteus(11) (12) is a gigantic deep sea isopod that is basically a monstrous foot-and-a-half long roly-poly that lies lurking at the bottom of the murky depths, ready to coldly devour anything that makes the mistake of going down there. So metal is the Bathynomus giganteus.
(9) I met a guy at the park who had a daughter near the same age as mine, and he didn't seem to be the same dull park dad so we started hanging out(10). Turns out he made horror movies and was way into Melvins and gave me my first real introduction to the rarefied blunt pleasures of that band. Oddly enough, for someone so into loud and vicious art, he was one of the quietest talkers I've ever met. I suppose one should always watch the quiet ones.
(10) That sentence sounds so seedy! Really, it was just playdates... which now sounds even worse.
(11) Pictured above.
(12) The whole annotation-heavy nature of this entry is due my editing a very style-heavy document while I listen to this stuff. I just looked up the rule for italicizing genus and species(13) out of shear habit
(13) Chicago 8.128