Review by Shezma for Inter Arma - Sulphur English (2019)

I see the love for this one, and if I had listened to this album early on in my Atmospheric Sludge challenge journey I would have stopped here because this is not for me. This album frustrated me to all hell. This hits all of my personal stereotypes and gripes of the genre. Sludge is such a good word to refer to this type of music, and this one for me doesn't even have the "Atmosphere" that helps me struggle through the sludge. There are elements of black metal I liked, there are the death doom elements that I liked, and I think the vocalist does really well with doom style. I would think a straight forward death/doom album would be better for my taste and I am not even the biggest fan of that either. The sludgier, messier melodies did not want me to listen to this. It frustrated me because when his clean vocals or the good growls hit in it I enjoyed, but then I had to tread through the "sludge" to get to the moments in between to enjoy, entirely my subjective opinion and hate to rate such a beloved record of the genre low but I'm here to be the other side of opinion and to share that if you have the same opinion as I do of sludge this is not for you but I have now found that there are other albums that get included in the genre I like much better that to my ears don't sound like this. If you don't like this album like I do, look into other Atmospheric Sludge metal as they don't all sound like this.