By the end of 2018, I would be shocked to see an absence of doom and sludge records on many critics and fans End of Year lists. Tongue Eating Louse’s latest, Voidwalker (Sludgelord), is one of those records that should not be missed either. Even with only three tracks, this forty-one minute odyssey brings you through so many emotions and the urge to listen over and over.

The opening track, ‘L appel Du Vide’, is the longest track of the three and really sets expectations on what to expect with the rest of the album. Tongue Eating Louse put together an opening track that, in roughly seventeen minutes, manages to touch each of their influences in an organized, yet almost organic, way. The climax in the latter half of the song where “…the rise and fall…” is shouted multiple times gets your head banging and your hair standing up on your arms. ‘Alchemy of the Void’ starts off with an eerie guitar riff with spoken word. This opens up into the main part portion of the song with continued eerie guitar riffs over the low-end and some rather disgusting vocal work which certainly works. The final track on Voidwalker, ‘Shaman of L.O.W.’, picks up right where the first two tracks left off. If it was not clear at this point, this record is all about bleak passage after bleak passage. The build-up halfway through the song into more sludgy goodness right before the guitar solo really is the icing on the cake of what is an amazing record.

For a forty-odd minute album (regardless of how you divide the tracks) there is not a moment where you are not absolutely captivated by the different layers and emotions here. It became a problem where I had to listen to Voidwalker at least once every couple of days because it was stuck in my head. Tongue Eating Louse are still relatively new in the scene only having released their first recordings two years ago, but they should be proud of what they produced and what lies in front of them.

8.5/10

TIM LEDIN