Just unearthed a couple of copies of this out-of-print Corrupted Lp - once these are gone, that'll be it...

Ah, at long last, the Insolito LP of COrrupted's sludge classic Paso Inferior from 2002 has been repressed again, apparently however for the very last time. But it's not the same music as the original CD release of Paso Inferior. This LP features a completely new track that took the central theme from the CD version, which the band rerecorded, making it different from the original in a couple of ways. The original CD release was forty-one minutes long, where this LP is only thirty. The A-side takes the sprawling slow-motion deathdoom dirge from the original and turns it into a tighter, fifteen minute version. The B-side features the ambient second half that is pretty much totally different from the CD. It's a little confusing, I'll admit.

Paso Inferior is one of the Japanese doomlords legendary early albums, a monstrous single track that blew minds at the time for it's oppressive length (back then, a single album long doom song like Jerusalem still bordered on the mythic), the pitch-black ambience that surrounded their extreme glacial sludge, the lyrics mysteriously written and performed in Spanish. This piece was one of the most grueling, devestatingly heavy pieces of extreme music that had been released up until that time, and I still remember feeling like a bulldozer had just backed up over me after I spun Paso Inferior for the first time. In the decade since, plenty of other bands have created even slower and more abstract slabs of doom metal, but nobody has ever been able to match the artfulness, the mystery and the majesty that Corrupted's music possesses. Yeah, it's a lot of hyperbole, but if any band deserves it, it's Corrupted.

The A-side unleashes the reimagined new Paso Inferior, a massive wave of blackened sludgecrust that seeps across the entire side of the record, a monstrous riff, tuned to tectonic lows, cruising like a prehistoric behemoth through a black sea of syrupy low-end and howling feedback, squalls of overloaded amplifiers screaming into the black void, Chew's vocals emerging like an undead samurai reciting ancient war prayers in Spanish, backwards, his voice as charred and monstrous as the music that surrounds it. Drums pound and lurch in extreme slow motion, the beats so slow and stretched out that it feels like whole minutes are passing between each new drumbeat. So epic and majestic, the apocalyptic dirge at once soul-crushing and staggeringly beautiful.

Then the other side picks up where the first faded off into blackness, another epic slab of sound that stretched across the entire side, but now the riff has receded into shadow and all that we are left with is an expanse of rumbling, black ambience. A yawning abyss of deep, rumbling drones and distant subterranean vibrations, building so slowly as the track progresses into an ominous, almost orchestral dronescape. Deep resonant strings as from huge cellos and violins groaning deep underground swell up to the surface, their strings moaning, joined by haunting female voices, ghostly whistling and echoing whispers floating on huge slabs of dark drift and blackened wind. This is as beautiful and epic as the first part of Paso Inferior, but its hushed tones and muted drones is a perfect counterpart to the devestating heaviness on the other side.
Corrupted are one of the titans of extreme glacial heaviness, at the top of the heap with Eyehategod, Godflesh, Earth, Swans, Zeni Geva, and Sleep. This record comes in a cool new sleeve design that goes perfectly with the music, a black matte jacket with glossy black ink printed over it, the Corrupted logo and abstract artwork appearing as a shiny spot gloss varnish against the jet black background. Inside, there's a printed insert with lyrics, and the vinyl itself is pressed on thick, heavy black wax.