Below - St Anthony's Fire
Not to be confused with the North Dakota or Pennsylvania Below, this unit was a short lived band out of Kentucky. I can't remember where I stumbled across it, I think there was a download link on the Karmic Swamp Label site somewhere on the net, but boy, am I glad I took the chance and clicked on that damn link because I fell in love with the album.
There are some albums that for whatever reason, you just develop a connection with and this is such a record. Four long tracks of out and out doom, ponderous, lethargic but with lengthy trance like jamming passages on most of them. This brand of doom isn't of the warm and anguished Candlemass trends, instead there is a definite herbal essence of the narcotic variety bleeding out of each riff.
Sadly, the Kentucky Below was short lived but the band splintered into a couple of awesome bands, Motherplant who I think are on an extended hiatus and but released an awesome self titled album in 2015 that was along similar lines to this but slightly more psychedelic and Hawkbill that had a definitely more aggressive, sludgy nature.
This day and age with so much music to discover, its easy to flit from new release to new release and never really GET any of them, but St Anthony's Fire by Below keeps beckoning me and is always close by like a pusher with your next fix.
So difficult to find and I can't find the link anymore but I'm hoping that a member of the Kentucky contingent sees the review and finally decides to get it on Bandcamp where it belongs.
Here are the links to Motherplant and Hawkbill.
Hawkbill
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