déstróy ànálóg nóisè

It’s that time of year again. Everyone’s got their own “Best of 2022” list, and by now you can probably guess the bands in the top spots before you even click the links. Don’t get me wrong— I, too, am foaming at the mouth to sing Messa’s praises. But there was a lot of good shit that flew under the radar as well. 

Here are 5 doom, drone, and psych releases (in no particular order) that deserved more attention in 2022. 

Weightless by Grief Circle

Weightless by Grief Circle

Suggested track: Hollow

Polish doom and post-metal outfit Grief Circle dropped this boulder back in October. The album features a heady mix of clean and growled singing that seems to embody the frustrations and impossible choices of the past two years. Amid a flurry of tempo changes, the band manages to get vicious metal and haunting misery to hold hands and play nice. If you’re looking for something heavy as fuck to ring in a new year, this is it. 

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Chem-Trails LIVE by Apex Ten

Chem-Trails LIVE by Apex Ten

Suggested track: Tentacles

Attention stoners: are you ready to embark on a sightseeing tour of the cosmos? Masters of psychedelic improv, Apex Ten, have the countdown running and the engines billowing steam. This band is ready to take you from Belgium to the fucking moon. This tasty live album features epic jams, ample use of a theremin, and no tracks under 8 minutes. It’s a journey you’ll want to take again and again. HIGHly recommend.

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The Salt Pale Collective EP by The Salt Pale Collective

The Salt Pale Collective EP by The Salt Pale Collective

Suggested track: Charnel Plains/Whore Abyss

UK doomers The Salt Pale Collective have assembled a cinematic masterpiece with this EP. Sometimes the melodies are floating and celestial; other times they writhe through grit and sludge. The band uses a wide range of noise, vocals, and instrumentation to sculpt monstrous landscapes that drip, shimmer, and evolve before your eyes. This EP is captivating and ghastly, and you won’t want to miss a second of it. 

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Tales of the Astro Throne by Astro Throne

Tales of the Astro Throne by Astro Throne

Suggested track: Caestus of Grief

Prairie doom act Astro Throne brought scorching psych riffs and hideous grooves to 2022. Their album is a dark fuzz-laden fantasy world, populated with fighters, wizards, and sci-fi abominations. Put on your headphones, turn up the volume, and rock out in a decaying world at the edge of your imagination.

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Za sad, još nam ne treba… by Zauvijek Hani

Za sad, još nam ne treba … by Zauvijek Hani

Suggested track: Civet u lobanji (“Flower in the skull”)

A rather interesting ‘Doom 128’ demo for the Commodore 128.

Straight up: It’s not Doom. It’s undated but it’s probably from around 1994, and it’s a simple 3D geometry engine using a dithered colour palette to simulate lighting, with a fixed camera height. All objects are composed of rectangles; no triangles, no other four-sided objects - the Freescape engine on C64 had these, so it appears to be unique.

I’m unclear as to how well it uses the C128, but it runs surprisingly fast - the Commodore 64 was notoriously bad at 3D polygons or even vectors, and was inferior to anything else from the same time (Freescape ran at 1 FPS!). It’s a long way from being Doom and has no hope of achieving anything on that level, but for a Commodore 128 owner without a PC or Amiga, this would have been not only the closest you can get, but it would have been a new level of immersion.

The Descent of Perseverance (Mars 2020)

The Mars 2020 descent stage holding NASA’s Perseverance rover can be seen falling through the Martian atmosphere, its parachute trailing behind, in this image taken on 18 February 2021. The ancient river delta, which is the target of the Perseverance mission, can be seen entering Jezero Crater from the left. HiRISE was approximately 700 kilometers (435 miles) from Perseverance at the time of the image and traveling at about 3 kilometers per second (6,750 mph). The extreme distance and high speeds of the two spacecraft were challenging conditions that required precise timing and for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to both pitch upward and roll hard to the left so that Perseverance was viewable by HiRISE at just the right moment.