Two very different brands of doom come together on this split, which has one song each from UK occult doom heathens The Wounded Kings (who traffic in a more traditional old school sound), and Richmond VA sludge metal bruisers Cough, who deliver more of their psychedelic, Southern sludge, each song around twenty minutes, and presented on heavy 180 gram vinyl in gatefold packaging for a limited edition release of 1500 copies. Looking this over, it might seem like an unlikely match up pairing traditional doomsters like The Wounded Kings with the punishing magma crush of a band like COugh, but each side ends up complimenting the other pretty well and both songs are pretty fucking amazing...

Dropping their first new material since the release of their Relapse debut Ritual Abuse, Cough are back with "The Gates Of Madness", which sounds very similar to the acid sludge that they delivered on the album. It opens with massive suspended downtuned chords and gong-like concussive strikes that reverberate throughout a massive cavernous expanse, unleashing this bleak, abstract ritual-like ambience for several minutes. Finally, the band crashes in with lumbering slow motion drums that are spaced out and drenched in reverb, the intense shrieking vokills echoing through the depths, monstrous doom riffage slipping into gargantuan drone-chug; then about halfway through, the vocals change into something entirely different, a melodic drugged croon that sort of reminds me of Jus from Electric Wizard, all swaddled in reverb and echo, and the guitars begin to spin out some killer dramatic leads, shifting into fuzz-drenched wah-wah soloing that soars above the narcotized sludge. It's fucking KILLER, the music gradually slowing down, becoming more and more sorrowful and funereal, before making its way back into the grueling skeletal dirge that the band started with, the vocals once again shrieking and howling, finally drifting off into a sea of feedback hum and decaying drum eruptions.

Once we flip over to The Wounded Kings's side, you're instantly sucked into the intoxicating doom of "Curse Of Chains", a slow motion whorl of muffled organs and shimmering cymbals introducing the song, and then the guitars descend with a killer ominous Sabbathian riff, then the entire band crashes in and get underway with this creepy, witchy doom jam, the organs and Mellotron hovering over the creeping doom laced with an occult 70s vibe, swirling guitar fx and wah whirl overhead, and when the vocals finally come in, they're this tremulous croon, a rich baritone that reminds me a little of Peter Murphy. The song eventually falls away into a stretch of shimmery organ drone and drifting dark psych ambience for a moment, then the drums slowly fade back in and the band drops back in to the lumbering psychedelic slowmo prog, growing more majestic towards the end, until everything drops out once again and a piano ends the song with a sad, brooding little coda.