Electric Wizard. Ramesses. Bong. An alumni of doomsters who are only capable of putting out incredible slabs of baked sludge so it’s no surprise that Superunnatural contains some of the most drawn out, fuzzed up, monolithic tunes out there.
‘Deceiver of the Deep’ grabs you by the throat, filling your ears with down-tuned riffs, tortured screams and huge, crashing drum beats that build and build before the song collapses inward, becoming a huge, swirling black hole of feedback that continues into ‘Ossuaries’.
‘Reapers Ruin’ will feel a little more familiar for fans of the involved bands, but the coup de grace is ‘Inside Eusas Head’. Starting off gently with some excellent guitar work, impressive drum fills and the right amount of atmosphere, before adding distortion and vocals to it and allowing it to simmer for seven minutes; it’s the sort of masterpiece that only comes when you think you know what to expect.
The CD comes with bonus tracks but they’re just rehearsals and while it’s interesting to see how the tracks progressed before the masters you find yourself yearning for just one more track rather than four demo versions.
Deftly mixing expectations with a desire to push forward 11 Paranoias have taken the sum of their parts and managed to create something dark and punishing. The uninitiated would be better finding some Bong or Wizard before moving onto this crushing, unapologetically dark release.
8/10
Matthew Tilt