I'm assuming that most of you guys are already well acquainted with the Japanese sludge behemoth known as Corrupted...it's safe to say that if you are a fan of doom, sludge, psychedelic crust, all things crushing and bleak and ultra SLOW that you've been bowing at the altar of Corrupted for some time now. Since the mid 1990's, these cats have established themselves as one of THE HEAVIEST bands on the planet, definitely one of the slowest, and their 1997 album Paso Inferior was, for many like myself, the introduction for Westerners to the massive doom of Corrupted. One song, over forty minutes long, Paso Inferior absolutely flattens you the first time that you hear it. The original CD that came out on Frigidity Discos in 1997 has been out of print for years and became a highly sought after disc on Ebay, sometimes fetching up to $100 for a copy. The CD has FINALLY been reissued though, through the new label Nostalgia Blackrain earlier this summer, and this reissue also boasts a much improved re-mastering job that makes Paso sound even heavier than before...the rumbling doomquake fucking thunders off of this disc now. And this is a totally different piece of music than the LP version of Paso that came out in the early part of this decade (which was itself just recently reissued on vinyl), connected somewhat by some thematic riffs and lyrics, but otherwise structured quite differently, and MUCH heavier/less ambient than the reworked music that was on the vinyl.

A single forty-two minute epic of massive glacial crush, a simple but earthshaking riff played over and over in geologic time, massively heavy and rumbling and downtuned, pushed forward ever so slowly by tectonic drums that crash out and dissipate, a 10 bpm crawl that surges like a wave of molasses through the swirling fog of feedback and high-end speaker shred that swarms all around. The miasma of feedback gives a distinctly mindbending quality to Paso Inferior, surrounding the crushing riffage with keening amp drones and incandescent hum that becomes more and more oppressive as the track continues. The horrific, monstrous vocals growled in Spanish bubble up, demonic incantations recited from deep inside the lavaflow of corrosive dirge. When the track starts, the first couple of minutes are all drifting, distorted amp buzz and guitar hum, a buzzing burnt-out wash of swirling skree and ambient feedback before the track lurches into the lumbering blackened sludge. As crushing and tectonic as this is, though, there are also tracers of melody that appear throughout, gorgeous fragments of melody partially glimpsed in the whirl of Corrupted's crawl. And at the end, the drums fall away, closing the track in several minutes of squealing feedback and amp noise and gutteral growls, a black sheet of howling drone that gradually fades away into nothingness. So heavy and majestic, this is one of the greatest doom/drone/psych/sludge albums ever, and it's ESSENTIAL for anyone into extreme heaviness. Seriously. All of the extreme doom and ultradrone that's come to us over the past ten years, Khanate, Moss, Trees, Asunder, Black Boned Angel, Fleshpress, Whitehorse, etc., all of that stuff is amazing, but nothing compares to the awesome power of Corrupted. Highly recommended.