Rodney Dangerfield Dies of Heaviness, Still No Respect: 2013's First Few Great Albums, Part Three

3. Cough/Windhand - Reflection of the Negative

This is a split EP pressed onto 12" vinyl. It will ruin your day if you believe in God and Ronald Reagan's America. If you live in the here and now (and are seriously stoned--seriously, stoned stoned stoned), then this will force you to put your skull back together one piece at a time; slowly, very slowly.

Dip a paint brush into a bucket of room-temperature tar and then hold it aloft in a chilled breeze. Thusly, invert the brush and watch the tar begin to fall from the hairs and toward the earth.

That's how fucking slow Cough's "Athame" is. And it will stomp your ass into the ground and turn you into sedimentary rock. One. Step. At. A. Time.

Windhand slog in from Richmond, Virginia with two tracks, "Amaranth" and "Shepherd's Crook." Those familiar with their self-titled debut shalln't be disappointed in their offerings here. Whatever harbinger of the devil Dorthia Cottrell conjures, she's surely met Ozzy Osbourne, Stevie Nicks, and maybe even William Faulkner. Southern Gothic doesn't even do Windhand justice. They seem to transcend the misery of the South into space. Phil Anselmo couldn't hang with these cats if he wanted to. Where most Southern doom relies upon anger, alienation, and self-loathing, Windhand reach back through time into the cosmos familiar to such acts as Electric Wizard, Flipper, and Venom.

So there you have it. Think Eyehategod meets Electric Wizard for Cough; Electric Wizard meets SubRosa for Windhand. Three tracks of dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooommmm. Do yourself a solid before it gets too nice outside and give it a listen.