Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - "Viscerals" (2020)

In many ways, this is the Chicken Korma of doom metal albums. That's to say, if you want to know how Indian (really, Bangladeshi) cuisine swept all before it in the UK, you have the really mild dishes to thank. 

Oh, there will always be a place for the anus-flaying glory of the Vindaloo, or the mild napalm tang of a good Jalfreezi. But the mild, wimp-out options, like your Butter Chickens, Pasandas, and, indeed, Kormas, gave the blander, more timid parts of the British palate a fighting chance.

Which brings us, naturally, to the new album by Geordie doom/psych rock quintet, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs. (Or Pigs7, as they will be referred to from now on in this review, because RSI ain't my bag.) "Viscerals", with its knowingly kitsch, luridly yucky cover art, is doom metal, but for the ironic craft beer crowd.

Cardinals Folly - "Defying The Righteous Way" (2020)

Sometimes, in the midst of all the dross, a doom metal album comes along which makes you want to skip and hop. In the bleakest way possible, you understand.

Such is the case with “Defying The Righteous Way”, the new album by Finnish trio, Cardinals Folly. In a previous life, I reviewed an earlier release of theirs, 2017’s enjoyable “Deranged Pagan Sons.” 

Even then, despite their rather blatant Fin-doom influences, the band was heading in its own direction, one that was fierce and even brutal.