If you can feel a deep rumbling through your walls and floors it could be an earthquake but just as easily it could be that someone in your immediate vicinity is spinning "Rambler's Axe" (This Charming Man Records), the new release from German sludge/doom/stoner metal titans PIECE. If its the former find yourself a sturdy and safe place to shelter, if it's the latter do exactly the same thing..... both are powerful forces of nature.
Desert Psychlist may not know who wrote the liner notes describing
PIECE's latest opus as "
thick like lava, black like ebony, angular and rough like the chin of Conan the Barbarian," but they certainly are deserving of a hefty bonus. In just one sentence, the writer of those words has perfectly captured what it is listeners should expect when "
Rambler's Axe" erupts from their speakers and proceeds to turn their brains to mush. From the opening track "
Heria," with its sampled narrative and ominous, throbbing blackened grooves overlaid with low guttural vocals, to the closing song "
Serpentfolk Tyel",
PIECE rarely give their audience a moment to catch their breath with listeners being bombarded with an unrelenting assault of gravelly vocalizations, thunderous riffage, and war drum-like rhythms. Tracks like "
Demigod," "
Bastard Sword", "
Spheres" title song "
Rambler's Axe" and "
Owl Eyes" all groan and creak beneath the weight of their own intensity, yet, these songs are far from ponderous or heavy-handed; there is musicality here, and if you listen closely, also melody. As an album
PIECE's "
Rambler's Axe" is both heavy and intense but offsets that heaviness and intensity with unexpected "
where did that come from" moments, those moments not so much beacons of light in waves of oppressing darkness but more serving as a subtle greying at the edges of that darkness.
If you like your metal to conjure up images of hordes of animal skin clad warriors brandishing medieval weaponry while charging across fields already littered with the remnants of the dead and dying then PIECE's "Rambler's Axe" is going to meet all your needs, if on the other hand you simply want to hear metal that is loud, heavy and intense then "Rambler's Axe" also delivers in that department.
Check it out .....
© 2025 Frazer Jones
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