Earth - Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions

The internet is a truly magnificent tool for the burgeoning muso - a vast, aggrandizing, jungle of history, subjectivity, and enough illegal audio to consume a lifetime or two. The latter in fact, is exactly my problem, as I've owned the paragraph-adjacent album for over 1 1/2 years now but have only in the past weeks given a proper listen. On one hand, I feel like a spoiled grifter with my complete Residents and Current 93 mp3 discographies; on the other hand... let's face it - I missed out on tasting any hint of accessibility these records may have had in their original run at ye local wax shoppe. Beyond that, I'd probably be a bit more than bitter and jaded had I spent the small fortune necessary to acquire the stockpile of nuclear horseshit you may know as "inessential Residents". Need a head on that brew? Whatever Happened To Vileness Fats, Our Finest Flowers, The Tunes Of Two Cities, Diskomo 2000, both American Composer Series albums and plenty more. Yeck.

But anyway, I digressed a while ago, and the point is: while the internet is a fantastic (albeit overwhelming) resource, all too often it leads me to utterly neglect some of the tastiest pies on my windowsill - on this occasion it's drone-doom heroes Earth's 3rd full length, the aptly titled Phase 3. About 3 years back, I decided to give drone-doom a chance, and with my love of chronology, started with the Extra-Capsular Extraction EP and the Earth 2 full-length only to be slam-fucked in the face with boredom. I couldn't imagine how anyone could enjoy this stuff and moved onto Sunn O)))'s White 1 with a slightly better outcome. Skip ahead another 2 years and I've garnered up quite a bit of patience through extended Merzbow and Khanate sessions - enough to get through Earth 2 without a nod of the head or a droop of the eyelids. As for enjoyability however, I can't bite my tongue for indie-cred, it's a boredom sandwich with average condiments; the meat of the affair being the song "Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine": 27 minutes of fuzzy nothingness. Why? Regardless, I was intrigued by a few reviews on metal-archives.com for Earth's followup, the decidedly more "rockin" Pentastar, so I picked up that and the aforementioned Phase 3 for cheapsies at a barrel scraping rec-shop upstate.

BUT THEN. The Nurse With Wound list rolls into my life on it's bodacious 2-wheeler and consumes my life with bad-boy sex and wild nights lit by the glow of my monitor.

And here we are today, talking about the greatness that is Phase 3. If you skipped every bit of text up to this point, I should advise you that we have reached THE SLIGHTLY MORE IMPORTANT SECTION OF THIS ENTRY: the descriptor!

If Earth 2 was a monolithic block of fuzz and Pentastar was rockin', then Phase 3 is what we could solely consider a monolithic block of rock. Essentially, this record combines the weight and droning atmospheric touches of the debut with the plodding, fuzzed-out rock tendencies of the sophomore release to completely blow my mind with awesomeness. Seriously, the mix of primordial sub-Sabbath riffage with the noise of Skullflower and the panged contemplation of Fushitsusha makes this disc an aural cake frosted with guitar fuzz par deliciousness.

http://www.mediafire.com/?xzejnddmxjz

Hey, is it just me, or has my writing become a lot less anarchic and a lot more stuffy than it was when I started? Have I sold out? I'll hold a poll later.
In the meantime, both Lexicon Devil and DAR took their final bows just a day apart, so I suggest you give 'em both a look. They both gave me a lot of good reading, albeit of entirely different varieties.