Album number three from this quirky blackened death sludge band from the UK, who this time around appears to be infatuated with images of young, smartly dressed ladies wielding heavy automatic weaponry. Works for me. When I wrote up the previous two releases for the Crucial Blast shop, I mentioned that a big part of what drew me to the band was that Derelict Sermon was the new one-man band from Martin Daniels, who used to be a member of the cult grind/crust band Scalplock; by this point though, Derelict Sermon more than stands on it's own as a true titan of extreme sludge, and now the band has expanded to include some additional players who help round out these immensely heavy jams (though Daniels is still the primary member, playing almost all of the instruments). Like US heavies Fistula, Derelict Sermon's sound is the combination of old school death, narco-sludge, extreme nihilism and blackened influences mashed together into an assault of mutated ultra-crush with a quirky, psych-addled edge. Just like the other albums, The Murderous Altitude is full of huge grinding riffs, super down tuned and crushing, and reminiscent of Boston doom legends Warhorse when the music is at it's slowest and heaviest. It's not all slow though, and that's what makes more crazed sounding than yer typical doom band; the crawling sludge will often take off into raging D-beat driven crustcore, or blasting blackened grind. Then there are the drones - no, not the single-chord guitar-against-the-amp type of distorted drone, but seriously psychedelic and evil sounding drones that on previous albums might have been created by amplified prayer bowls and creepy raga buzz. Here, the black swarming drones manifest in sitar-like strings (like on "Ambush Techniques") and weird orchestral ambience, once again giving Derelict Sermon's black doomcrust a demonic, drugged out ambience. Add to that the way in which the stuttering riffage and abrupt tempo changes sometimes sound like the song suddenly starts to play backwards before slipping back into the sludgy dirge, those ghostly chants and weird ululating witch vocals in the background, blasts of massively distorted noise rock riffs, and the over-the-top snarling, cackling vocals that remind me of Stefania Pedretti from Ovo more than anyone else, and you get a very brutal and unique slab of mutant metal filth. It ends with an abstract wave of black sludge and distorted ambient drone called "Leoncia", with blackened snarls and creepy Diamanda Galas-esque female vocals wailing over top, an excellent ending to the gruesome skull-crushing heaviness.