Cough - Sigillum Luciferi
[Forefield Records]

Cough claim to be the ‘loudest and heaviest band’ in Richmond, Virginia (not bad considering they share a city with Souvenir’s Young America) and they certainly put their money where their mouth is on this six track effort.

Clocking in at a whopping 57 minutes, swampy stoner sludge is the order of the day here. Basslines with more bottom-end than an elephant, vocals that sound like Gollum with a severe dose of bronchitis and riffs lifted from the gospel according to Iommi. The brutal, punishing drums don’t so much beat, but toll in slow-motion like huge gothic cathedral bells. It’s an impressive sound, and this is before this three-piece contaminate everything with particularly toxic waves of screeching guitar feedback.

It’s nothing we haven’t heard before, of course, from the likes of Electric Wizard, Iron Monkey or fellow Yanks Eyehategod, but there is no denying the awesome presence of tracks such as “288 Years of Sin” and “Lyssavaris” that simply pummels you into submission. As the introduction to “Northern Plague” informs us, ‘suicide is the only way out...’

Sigillum Luciferi Tracklisting:

1. Killing Fields
2. Hole in the Infinite
3. 288 Years of Sin
4. Northern Plague
5. Shallow Grave
6. Lyssavirus