Elsewhere on this week�s new arrivals update I wrote about the recently released debut from the band Keplers Odd, who combine crushing guitar/bass sludge and industrial noise and who feature members of UK black industrialists Deadwood and this band, Culted. The limited edition disc that Relapse released from Keplers Odd is what led to the label picking up this band, and it's one of the doomiest things that I've heard from Relapse in years. Culted is a trans-continental project with three members based in Canada and singer Daniel Jannson located over in Sweden, but through file transfers and email have created a punishing debut that combines industrial darkness and extreme doom into a crushingly heavy slab of slow-mo malevolence. Jannson's harsh, blackened raspy vokills sound like they're drifting up out of an abandoned mine shaft, and add to the bleak, cavernous feel of Culted's blackened doom. Guitars move from punishing droning doom to dissonant riffage that has a vague Deathspell quality, and the black metal influence on Culted's sound is really obvious. There's symphonic keyboards that emerge out of the gloom, keening orchestral feedback, and heavy tribal drumming that sometimes gives the songs a Swans-like bombast, albeit one that's drowning in an oppressive and utterly miserable atmosphere. Crushing slow-motion deathdoom riffs meet psychedelic wah guitar, skittering jazzy percussion and clanging oil drum pound appear alongside the grinding dirge-like drumming, and the band injects ample amounts of ambient pipe organ like drones and swells of kosmich synthesizer into their crawling black thunder. Some really industrial sounding elements creep through into the sound all throughout Below The Thunders, wafts of dark electronic ambience, crushing distorted synths, bits of claustrophobic Throbbing Gristle-esque noise, and the rolling toms and tribal rhythms show up consistently, hitting a peak on the track "Gunburn" where Culted breaks into a combination of grisly deathdoom crush and Test Dept. style percussion. Very cool. These guys are as grim and blackened as it gets, channeling the same sort of portentous, apocalyptic density as Monotheist-era Celtic Frost, early Swans, psychdeathdoomers Esoteric, and Laudanum. The packaging is fucking sweet, too; the disc comes in a digipack with a die cut cover that allows a portion of the booklet to show through.