��Earthmission is a two-song cassingle (yes, an actual cassingle) from the short-lived but promising Connecticut band Earthlord, who blended together spacey dope-fueled atmosphere and traces of cosmic psychedelia into their heavy, traditional doom metal. These two songs appear to be all that was recorded by the band, which featured members of likeminded doom/heavy metal throwbacks Hour Of 13 and Vestal Claret and, most surprisingly, bassist Fred Melillo, who had previously played in the obscure Connecticut proto-metal/heavy prog rock band Legend, who released an album of amazing prog-tinged Manilla Road-esque proto-metal titled From The Fjords back in 1979. In fact, the timing of this cassette's release couldn't be better, as a vinyl reissue of Legend's lost classic recently surfaced in late 2013 on Acid Nightmare Records, and has been steadily getting a lot of love from fans of offbeat private-press metal. Along with nimble-fingered Legend bassist Fred Melillo, Earthlord also featured frontman Phil Swanson, whose Ozzy-esque croon has glazed a number of killer doom metal albums in recent years, and Simon Tuozzoli, a fellow member of Swanson's Vestal Claret. This two-song cassette contains the only material that these guys managed to record in 2007 before putting the band on hiatus, both songs originally intended for a vinyl split with Vestal Claret that ended up being cancelled.

�� The first song is the heaviest of the two; "God Of Antiquity" has that heavy, thickly produced sound that a lot of the early 90's Maryland doom bands had, blending huge Sabbathian riffage with metallic rock hooks and soaring chorus-drenched leads, the sound thick and burly and catchy; Swanson's vaguely Ozzy-esque vocals are right at home among this sort of grooving doom metal thud. The b-side jam "He Who Is Of The Water" though is a little more soulful, a little more languid, but still pretty heavy, with some killer grungy guitar soloing and more of that chorus0-drenched sound; Swanson's singing on this song sounds virtually ectoplasmic, and it hints at an interesting direction the band could have taken their music in if they had kept at it. An interesting trad-doom curio, fans of bands like The Obsessed, Spirit Caravan, Internal Void and anything that Swanson is involved with are likely going to dig this. Comes in a classic cassingle-style o-card package, and is limited to one hundred copies.