Band:	Wallowing
Album:	Earth Reaper
Style:	Black metal, Doom metal, Sludge metal
Release date:	April 2023

01. A World Weeping
02. Flesh And Steel
03. Echoes Of The Outer Reaches
04. Cries Of Estima
05. Oblieration
06. Cyborg Asphyxiation
07. Earth Reaper

Quite often in reviews of extreme metal records, there’ll be a section in which I’ll highlight moments of levity, whether melodic or atmospheric, that positively stand out amidst the surrounding chaos. Nevertheless, there’s times when it’s nice to just wallow in putridity and listen to a record that is unmitigatedly abrasive and malicious, such as the vulgar sludge doom of Earth Reaper.

Brighton’s Wallowing have been building their reputation as a formidable live band since forming 5 years ago, particularly due to their on-stage fluorescent beekeeper outfits, but they’ve made waves as a studio act too, through 2019’s debut record Planet Loss and their 4-way split with Slabdragger, Thin and Vixen Maw. Their sophomore release Earth Reaper is the kind of exercise in cosmic depravity that is only going to further enhance their reputation as purveyors of filth.

Stylistically, I would label Wallowing as sludge doom; there are hints of black metal, but I feel like they are mostly peripheral, and there are moments that veer towards hardcore, but very much in the way that harsher sludge acts such as Eyehategod do. There’s plenty of sludge and plenty of doom, but while there are portions of this record that highlight the groovy lineage that sludge and stoner metal share, the sludge on display here is very much more on the abrasive and punishing side, like a Dragged Into Sunlight or Indian. That abrasion is only amplified by the use of noise and dark ambience across the album, as well as the heavily distorted higher-pitched shrieks of vocalist Zak Duffield, which almost resemble static noise at times with the extent of the distortion applied to them.

Wallowing take influence lyrically from science fiction, and much like another British sci-fi extreme metal band, Cryptic Shift, they show a wanton disregard for regular song lengths. Three of the seven tracks here are 30-second interludes, with progress from ambient (“A World Weeping”) to Vessel Of Iniquity-esque cacophony (“Obliteration”). The remaining four songs get increasingly longer; “Cyborg Asphyxiation” is longer that both the preceding ‘proper’ tracks (“Flesh And Steel” and “Cries Of Estima”) combined, and the closing title track is longer than all three of those put together. Perhaps unsurprisingly, “Flesh Of Steel”, in addition to being the shortest full song here, is also the most consistently fast, featuring multiple bursts of frenetic hardcore firepower. Still, the predominantly slow, trudging approach of Wallowing is established on this song, as the group shift between stop-start grim riffs in its second half that gradually dissipate any momentum generated in the song’s early frantic moments.

“Cries Of Estima” almost inverts this approach; starting off on the boundaries of funeral doom, the song ever so slowly builds momentum, working towards outbursts of blast beats and groovier riffs. The remaining half-hour of the record comprised of the final two songs does feature moments of more up-tempo swaggering sludge or outright violence, but it is dominated by anguished crawls through glacial doom passages, the drums moving songs forward just fast enough so that the walls of dissonance-tinged distortion don’t collapse upon themselves. I admittedly find the extent to which these sequences are pushed can test the limits of my patience; when livelier Southern-tinged guitar and keyboard solos arrive midway into “Cyborg Asphyxiation”, the arrival of any variation in sound is warmly appreciated, and the solo towards the end of the title track sounds even better for having battled through the preceding 10 minutes, which at times border on drone. One does occasionally wonder why the group focus so much on doom when their faster riffs are tastily gnarly.

Still, while it’s not the easiest album to grasp, its approachable 44-minute overall length stops these more prolonged passages from being extended to an offputting extent. Furthermore, while Wallowing are fiercely aggressive when they want to be, it suits their name to dwell on the sheer punishment that slow, harsh sludge can offer. Earth Reaper is an album that sounds like its creators would be happy to hear it described as an uncomfortable experience, and there’s something to admire in that.