Night Hag have put Great Dismal Darkness up in full, a day before Rotted Life Records release it. Seven songs, four years after Phantasmal Scourge, and the first record the Virginia band have made as a four piece.
The addition is the point. Joe Arida came in on second guitar next to Casey Williams, with Sam Fox on bass and vocals and Jon Ransom on drums and vocals, and the extra guitar went into thickness rather than into leads. The band describe this as their slowest and most oppressive record, which from a death doom band that started in primitive death metal is a direction rather than a boast.
What it sounds like on paper: lumbering riffs, double kick slowed to a crawl, distortion dense enough to blur the notes, and passages that break back into straight death metal. The contrast is what keeps a record like this from becoming wallpaper, and it is the thing a second guitarist buys you.
They have been at this since a demo in 2010, through two more demos, an EP, a live tape and two splits. The streaming of the whole album the night before release is the modern version of what that scene has always done with a dubbed cassette.