WINTER - INTO DARKNESS (1990)
As doom metal has gotten slower, bands have looked for various ways of occupying their audiences, and perhaps their own, attention. One aptly-named band that wasn't really interested in frills, though, was Winter. Most of what you're getting here: heavy guitar tone and slow tempos. And it's great. The band had strong roots in the New York hardcore scene, actually, and they have a certain crustiness to their sound. Expect lots of squealing feedback, and apocalyptic musings resembling the likes of Amebix.
As much as this is a really foundational death/doom record, I think it also is one of the first albums in a tradition of sludge metal albums that have decided they're no longer interested in creating an accessible exterior and just producing the most punishing, glacial music possible (bands like Grief, Noothgrush, Corrupted and more recently Primitive Man all fit this mould). And part of what makes this kind of music so
crushing is it's very monotony. An album like this leaves you very little breathing room. It's not interesting in being kind to you, or holding your hand. There is no way out except through. You're trapped in a never ending nightmare. You are suffocating. And that's what makes it so incredibly cathartic and almost cleansing.
I think this album is to thank for many, many brutal developments of sludge and doom metal. No longer the heaviest record on earth, it's an important benchmark for this kind of approach to pure, caustic depression. Legendary. I think Servants of the Warsmen is corny tho. I think the slower sections in general are the stronger stuff here, and Eternal Frost has one of the most evil riffs ever.