Black Sabbath fans have long been aware of the existence of demo tapes made by the quartet during their brief spell under the bland moniker Earth, shortly before they evolved into the behemoth that founded heavy metal. Earth – and its earlier incarnation, the Polka Tulk Blues Band – belonged to the British blues boom of Cream, Fleetwood Mac, Savoy Brown, Ten Years After and their ilk, which counterintuitively was also the last generation of U.K. bands to follow the Beatles’ career path by sharpening their skills with a tour of duty in the clubs of Hamburg. Black Sabbath recorded their foundational debut album in October of 1969, and Earth recorded these demos just months earlier, so if you’re a Sabbath fan or even if you’ve just heard the band’s…
Tag Archive: Earth
Seattle drone-rock titans Earth release their latest live document, WEM Dominator (Live in London NW1, 2016), an unrelenting display of the band’s seismic force, recorded during their performance at London’s KOKO in 2016. Sharing the bill with legendary heavyweights Neurosis, Earth delivered a set of hypnotic intensity, crushing volume, and towering, glacial beauty.
For over three decades, Dylan Carlson and his ever-evolving ensemble have been crafting tectonic soundscapes that defy convention, forging a path between meditative drone and colossal doom-laden riffs. WEM Dominator is an album of mesmeric modal patterns, it’s a recording that captures the trio’s intricate, slowly evolving euphoria in a period when their experimentation…