I’ve been warning you Doomers & Stoners that it was coming. A treasure trove of content from those boredom-driven collaborations of the Great Lockdown opened up for the world to see and hear. As one who is endlessly fascinated by the creative process, I’m especially interested in music borne of struggle – especially an experience so many of us have shared. Isolation is a real son of a bitch and it can easily drive a person to languor, restlessness, self-loathing, even madness…or it can inspire some fantastic inventiveness and innovation.

You’re about to be treated to a massive effort between two bands that labored through the fear, uncertainty, and grief of the 2020 pandemic and bared their soul in the process. It’s a record that’s vicious to the core, yet brilliant in its own right. Doomed & Stoned is pleased to give the world premiere of this ‘Split From The Isolation’ (2021) by Betlezeus and Ockultist from neighboring Sweden and Finland. For those of you who have been starving from lack of sludge in your diet, have I got a smorgasbord of wicked nourishment for you!

BETELZEUS

BETELZEUS emerged from Lahti in 2014. Their first album 'Congolese Sterilization’ (2019) was released as a DIY cassette. It contained some original sounding sludge doom with a small twist of post rock soundscapes. Later the album was reissued on cassette (Kohina Records) and on CD and LP (Interstellar Smoke Records). Read the Doomed & Stoned review.

It’s good to have Betelzeus back with brand new material. In fact, Split From The Isolation is just the first of the three records the Finnish foursome is planning for the remainder of the year.

Joonas (vox), Jirko (guitar, noise), Toni (bass), and Efe (drums) dish out a heaping helping of bruising doom, beginning with “Shitborn,” a caustic number underscored by the apocalyptic chords, sawing riffs with sharp dissonance, and Jirko’s acid-spewing vocals, which echo into the long, dark night. This sludgy number is one that’ll be circulating in my playlist for some time.

“Paradise/Parasite” crawls forth next, with a solitary statement of the theme in guitar, accompanied by swirling pedal effects that summon a huge wall of noise. Drums and bass join in, and it feels like we might just have been abducted by UOFs while sound asleep, lounging on a hammock tucked away between two palm trees somewhere in the Carribean Islands. Now, we’ve become the parasite strapped down for probing and dissection by the Roswell Greys. I’m totally making that up, of course. It could have a higher-minded meaning, like how we’re all sucking the life out of this blue planet of ours. That while we’re fighting off bugs and slugs, mosquitos and worms, that we’re the real parasite on Mother Earth. You decide (or make no decision at all).

The last track on the A-side is a cover of “Deathcrush” by Norwegian black metal gods MAYHEM, which the band quips “shows what happens when you strip tremolo-picking guitars and blast beats off the black metal classic.” Hell yeah! And we’re not even through with this sludge feast, either.

OCKULTIST

Are you ready for the B-side of the split? I don’t think you’re even ready, bro. I’m looking at you sitting there with your shoulders hunched over, snacking on your Doritos, and I just don’t think your heart can take it. Well, ready or not, you’re about to be pummeled by OCKULTIST.

The Stockholm outfit arose, as so many great bands do, from the ashes of an old D-beat band with, their bio states, “the goal of crushing themselves with the slowest and filthiest music their minds could create.”

After the release of several demos, Ockultist gave us 'Present Day Neglect’ (2017), followed by the LP 'Festering Wounds’ (2020) on Sludgelord Records. One could sense each release pushing the band further and further in a heavier, angrier, filthier direction.

Ockultist’s contribution to Split From The Isolation sees the band stomping through even muddier territory, seeping with vile death, crust, and black metal along the sludgy way. This is what rises to the surface when Christopher (guitar, vox), Joachim (bass), and Clarence (drums) join forces.

You can feel it in the raw first track, with it’s earthshaking footprint. I’m trying to imagine a more ominous motif than this one, and I can’t. There’s enough rumbling riffage here to wake the goddamn dead (or maybe a Jackass-style rude awakening of Bam’s dad). Go ahead, crank it high and offend your neighbors! This is, after all, “Contempt.”

“Ulcerous” heaves guttural bile as it drags its weighty iron chains with each step. The heavy laden soul summons more and more strength with every drumbeat, it’s race providing it with one last burst of hatred with which to inflame humanity, Primitive Man style.

And wow, what a finish! Sweden covers Sweden in this case, with the younger Ockultist taking on the great Örebro band NASUM, whose name was derived from the 1973 film Flesh For Frankenstein. You can hear the underlying insanity of the original “Fight Terror With Terror” in this monstrosity, which seemed ideal for Ockultist to cover.

Look for the full release of Split From The Isolation by Betelzeus and Ockultist on May 30th (pre-order Side A, pre-order Side B). Each of these heft tracks is dense with doom and slithering with sludge making it a real feast for your jaded eardrums.

Stream it all right here, right now as Doomed & Stoned presents the world premiere of this six-legged Scandinavian beast! The album premier also includes the vinyl bonus tracks. After the stream ends they will only be available on the LP version (ETA: Summer 2021). If you dig the tunes as much as I know you will, remember to show the bands some love!

Give ear…

‘Congolese Sterilization’ (2019) by BETELZEUS comes to us from some pissed off Fins! In true grit and form fitting fashion of sludge, the Lahti quartet present six songs that sound off like an air raid siren. The title track comes across like headline news depicting the genocide of over five million people in the African Congo. Spreading from North Africa to South Africa, with at least ten countries involved. One thousand people dying a day from malnutrition and disease in 2003 at the end of the war. There were around two million people displaced from their homes. The Second Congo War was the deadliest conflict worldwide since World War II.

Take a moment and think about that. To this day there are still wars raging on and plaguing Africa and its people. Think about how long the United States has been at war and for what? Oil, minerals, drugs. Greed and corrupt ideology cloud the heads of men across the globe and affects us all.

Joonas (vox), Jirko (guitar), Toni (bass), and Efe (drums) are town cryers, newsies for our modern times. Very angry about local and worldwide atrocities, as in “Earth Torn Up and The Sky Is Bleeding Black.” The last track on Congolese Sterilization, “All You Got(…And It’s All You Get)” is hypnotic and haunting, washing away in fading reverb and feedback – a decrescendo of disdain and bitterness. I can say after listening to the band’s debut, I am now a new fan Betelzeus!

An Interview With Betelzeus

By Billy Goate

What’s the band’s origin story?

Betelzeus was kind of “formed” in 2011, as a joke in a houseparty by Jirko and me (Joonas). We didn’t have any real rehearsal place or anything, and we both played guitars. Nothing too serious at the time.

In 2014, we rented our first real rehearsal space and trained there a bit more, and I changed to playing bass, we didn’t have a drummer and weren’t getting much better, but that was the time Jirko came up with the main riff of “Congolese Sterilization” and I tried to do the vocals for that just for fun, and it worked. Still didn’t have a drummer, though.

By 2015, Jirko and Efe were drinking whiskey – and some horrible tasting pastis “Duval” – and decided that Efe should come and try playing some drums to the rehearsal space, so they began to practice together more and it worked out great. Song began to take actual form from then on.

Then in 2018, Jirko contacted Toni and asked him to mix the album that we were planning, and suddenly he was playing the bass. That summer, we went to record guitars and drums in studio and would continue to record more stuff as the months went on.

'Congolese Sterilization’ is a provocative title. What’s the story behind it?

Congolese Sterilization was selected to be our album’s title simply because it was the first track we came up when we were starting out. As it is now, the title track is more detached from the full album, but since the themes are rooted deep in misery and human cruelty, it still fits.

We came up with the name when we read about the horrific things that happened – and still continue to happen – in the Congolese civil war. Forced sterilizations and rape destroyed lives.

How do you build on this theme in the album?

Themes of the album are, from the lyrical standpoint, about human degradation and crumbling society. The title track “Congolese Sterilization” is a stand out from the album. It is about the horrible abuse that women and children had to suffer at Congolese civil wars.

The rest of the album is more open for interpretation, but the themes are still fitting. Tracks like “Earth’s Torn Up And Sky Is Bleeding Black” and “Wasted And Humiliated” are centered around oppression and rising up against those who are in power.

Album then switches its gears in “[N/A]” and “Scorched Lungs,” which are centered around crumbling civilization and the end of oppressive rule. The last track, “All You’ve Got (…And It’s All You Get),” takes the album to its closure with hellish landscapes, in which the former person of power suffers through endless horrors only to be revived over and over again.

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