There are a ton of one man metal bands out there, especially of the blackened and/or droney variety, but you don't often see a one-man doom metal band, especially one as retardedly heavy as Derelic Sermon. This British doom band is the creation of Martin Daniels, who plays all of the instruments and rends his vocal cords to emit one hell of a nasty rasp, and the guy has got to be commended for being able to pull of such a sickeningly heavy sound all by his lonesome. It was his self titled debut from two years ago that first turned me on to his brand of crusty, monstrous black doom, and that album was one that I have found myself recommending since to all of my buddies who ask me for tips on super-heavy obscure doom.

Before he started Derelict Sermon, Martin was also a member of the band Scalplock, who weren't that well known over here in the US, but anyone that did get a chance to hear them got an earful of some of the most scathing extreme hardcore of the past decade. Ken from Hellnation endorsed 'em and put out one of their albums (On Whose Terms) on his label Sound Pollution in 2000, which was followed by the absolutely terrifying 2002 album Spread The Germs�Over the Human Worms , which to this day stands as one of the most fearsome grind albums I have ever heard. Anyways, one of the things that makes Derelict Sermon's brand of black crust doom so damn tasty is the heavy helping of stench that Martin brings to his music from his days in Scalplock, a distinct English nastiness, and his second album Wardycurse is even stenchier, crustier, and HEAVIER than the first one. The riffs on this are titanic, and achieve Warhorse-levels of asphalt-scraping massiveness...those guitars have gotta be tuned to, like, K or something. When it's slow, it's really goddamn slow, full-on creeping dirgey droning brain flattening doom metal, but on the opener "Caisa's Curse" it shifts into a sudden blast of rampaging crustcore about halfway through, then sinks back into a subsonic neandethal dirge that gets injected with the buzzing drone of some monstrous prayer bowl. That's another thing that I loved about this album - Martin uses a lot of very noticeable drone elements as an added layer to his crushing doom, and the way he uses these electronic raga-like drones and endless prayer bowl hums to underscore the massive creeping riffage and scorched earth visions ends up sounding very cool, and actually pretty unique. So yeah, this is fucking awesome. If the idea of a blackened, crustier version of Warhorse doing marching anthems for an Apocalypse Cult floats yer boat, then you know what to do. Highly recommended.