Moss/Wolfmangler - Protected By The Ejaculation Of Wolves split [2005]

N.B. The artwork here is either side, one on top of the other.

So. You say you like extreme music. So. You say you like music which has extremities in pace, either fast or slow. This is a test of that. Moss' side is perhaps a little more conventional, with one droney doom track and one track of noise (which is the best track of the split). Wolfmangler, on the other hand, are another band who have very divisive opinions formed on them across the whole scene. They play a form of drone/funeral doom that's quite unusual, in that it's nearly entirely acoustic. Naturally (no pun intended), this has people who love it (like myself), and those who think it's just gimmicky bollocks. It has my seal of approval.

128 kbps

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Esoteric - The Maniacal Vale [2008]

Ah, Esoteric. The first funeral doom band I heard - after a place in the album of the year list of Terrorizer, if I remember correctly. The thing about this is that it somehow manages to make an album of 100 minutes, no less, stay interesting throughout. With a perfect production, which complements the style brilliantly, to make the whole album have an almost erotic feeling about it, I cannot see why this album does not get the critical attention of Evoken, Skepticism, or even their own Subconscious Dissolution Into The Continuum.

~200 kbps VBR

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Wormphlegm - In An Excruciating Way Infested With Vermin And Violated By Executioners Who Practise Incendiarism And Desanctifying The Pious [2001]

I was initially drawn to this demo through a mixture of the high cult status and the incredibly long title, but it's a solid slab of funeral doom. It consists only of the 25-minute title track, which builds a growing sense of unease throughout with various faster passages which feel almost like exorcisms, however pretentious that may sound.

272 kbps VBR

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Thergothon - Fhtagn Nagh Yog-Sothoth demo [1991]

This demo, Thergothon's only release aside from the genre-defining, pioneering 'Stream From The Heavens', is a rawer take on two songs that would later appear on 'Stream...', and two additional songs that cannot be found anywhere else. This is a bit of a lost gem. Get it.

320 kbps

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diSEMBOWELMENT - Transcendence Into The Peripheral [1993]

Along with Thergothon's 'Stream From The Heavens', this album essentially created the funeral doom sound, although this is quite different to the monolithic slooooow sound of today, with some parts getting up to quite a speed, and even some blastbeats! It also takes more of a death metal influence than today's heavily black metal influenced sound.

192 kbps

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