Once again, back in stock on both Cd and Lp, with the vinyl edition packaged in a glossy black gatefold package.

Cough's 2008 debut Sigillum Luciferi continues to be one of the most popular doom metal albums that we have here at C-Blast, a constant seller three years after it's release. Of course, the band has gained quite a bit more visibility now that they are on Relapse and have released the acclaimed sophomore effort Ritual Abuse, but there's no denying the crushing power of their first album, which remains one of the best slo-mo metal debuts of the past decade.

On Sigillum, this Richmond, VA band does not reinvent the wheel, but they do effectively take control of the psychedelic blackened doom sound, becoming masters of the slow build in the process. The album opener "Killing Fields" is a prime example of this; the song takes several minutes to build from a simple drum plod and droning high end feedback before the band finally lurches forward into the syrupy doom-groove, and when it kicks in the effect is stunning, erupting like black lava into the lumbering slow motion sludge metal crush of gluey Sabbathoid riffs, which rumble through a cavernous ambience that casts so much darkness on Cough's doom metal. The band's vocals pair together a clean, drawn out punk snarl with high pitched blackened shrieks, and this adds a constant threat of violence to the music, bolstered by the torpor inducing riffs that draw from the obvious influences (Eyehategod, Buzzoven, Weedeater, that whole school of swampy blooze metal), but they also inject a heavily narcotized, black hole psych vibe that draws from the 70's acid horror of Electric Wizard, lacing the songs with lysergic rock solos, howling Theremins and Hawkwind-style synth whoosh.

The first half of "Hole In The Infinte" is all hideous, snarling sludge, blackened shrieks and massive billowing reverb over crushing magma riffs, but then drops the vocals for the latter half and sinks into a brain-glazing morass of space rock fx and monstrous black riff that slowly winds down into entropy; that is followed by "288 Years Of Sin", pure Eyehategod worship with sickly feedback infecting a crushing head nodding riff-trance. The song "Northern Plague" opens with a pro-suicide sample before dropping a saurian bass line and spacious drum trudge into a pit of horrific shrieks and snarled feedback, turning into a swingin', blackened swamp groove, followed by the dismal dirge and soaring despair-heavy vocals of "Shallow Grave", and the closing tectonic power-mantra "Lyssavirus" that ends the album with nine minutes of skullcrush.