Unitron SCIMITAR

Never before has a band created the perfect match of simultaneously laying down some of the heaviest, noisiest, feedback-ridden sludge and most melodic harmonies in music this aggressive. As soon as that first note hits in Scimitar, that's all you need to know. Pound, pound, pound, this is the closest anyone's gotten to reaching a modern day equivalent to Blue Cheer going so heavy with distortion that the recording technology at the time couldn't handle it. Of course, this is 2002 so it's loud (and I mean fucking loud) and clear, but the amps are just holding on.

This whole album is just dripping with sludge, all the while Steve Brooks is serenading deadpan noise pop melodies as if this is a Pavement album. Should be essential for any sludge and grunge fans.

Unitron With doom metal and it's sludge and stoner brethren being pretty underrated to begin with, there's bound to be amazing bands that get forgotten about even among the genre's cult following. One of these bands is the Floridian band Floor, who just so happens to mix doom, sludge, and stoner all into one.

While their self-titled debut album was released in 2002, the band has been around since 1992. While most of their recordings before '02 were singles and splits, they did record Dove in 1994. For whatever reason the album wasn't released until a decade later in 2004, the year the band broke up, only to reform in 2010.

Dove is one of the heaviest albums I've ever heard, yet features no bass. It's hard to believe, but all of the distortion, feedback, and crushing brutality is just completely brought by guitars and drums. The opening two tracks "Who Are You" and "Namaste" are short but destructive rampaging blasts of sludgy chaos, which feature screeching feedback alongside Sabbath-esque riffing that is cranked up to 11. This is followed and perfectly contrasted with my favorite on the album, the more laidback "In a Day". This track has more of a stoner vibe, but not without more high-pitched distortion breaking in from time to time in the song. The main guitar riff sounds incredibly close to a bass with a distortion pedal, but it's not, surprisingly. "Figure It Out" also mixes some stoner elements, and Steve Brooks' vocal style on these two tracks really contribute to the overall stoner feel.

Most of the doom metal is saved for the end of the album, which would contain "Floyd", the title track, and "I Remember Nothing" (Which is omitted on the vinyl version). All three of these tracks kind of blend together, with "Floyd" being the most enjoyable of them. The title track could be an almost perfect eighteen-minute behemoth of sludgy dirges, but it ruined by wasting probably about ten of those minutes. For the first eight-minutes, it slowly crushes your skull with pure force, and if it was just that it would be perfect for when you're in the mood for slow and meandering doom. However, it ends with random annoying talking, which I always find annoying when it appears, as well as just incoherent feedback and drone. The end of the title track pretty much sums up "I Remember Nothing", and unfortunately that title fits pretty well.

Despite the album's shortcomings with the final two lengthy tracks, Dove is a masterpiece of doom/sludge metal. If you love screeching distortion and feedback and crushingly brutal slabs of riffs, Floor is up there with the best and is definitely an essential listen. Hope you found this review helpful, feel free to comment!

aglasshouse Floor started their career in the year 1993, releasing their debut single 'Loanin'' to the local Miami music scene. What this particular song and it's B-side 'Figbender' presented was an unprecedented brand of heaviness, one that I believe remains unparalleled today. While not nearly as professionally mixed as their 2002 debut, a factor that greatly contributed to the massive sound and really allowed them to tune it down farther, what this particular single still shows a prototype of what Floor would come to be acclaimed for. Shrieking, dying-animal like screams (granted which got much more clean in the future),spine-crushingly heavy riffs, and the occasional tortured whine of guitar feedback. If this is what you got and you weren't expecting it, I just don't know what to tell you. A one Clint Sutton appears as the gargantuan skin-slammer on this record, but he was replaced with Jeff Sousa a year or two after this release. Either way, Floor shows that it still acted as an extremely cohesive unit even in their earliest days.

Vim Fuego MMA Reviewer's Challenge: Album selected by aglasshouse

Floor. Not exactly an inspiring or enlightening name for a band. It seems a bit… beige. The three members of the band obviously thought it was OK, because they doubled down and also called their debut album ‘Floor’.

But Floor? What could you reasonably expect from a band with a name like that? Limp indie rock? Ironic minimalist anti-pop? Generic metalcore?

How about heavy metal thunder falling from the sky?

Like, fucking, WOW!

Yes, “like, fucking, WOW!” is a little lacking in the eloquence department, but just wait ‘til you actually HEAR this! Heavy doesn’t begin to describe it. Floor seems to have tuned down to somewhere about six feet below their feet, dosed their amp valves with steroids, and cranked the volume so far past eleven the knob has twisted off. The term doom metal seems insufficient, inaccurate but still totally fitting. The guitars are so heavy they have an actual physical presence. There must be a limit to what can actually be produced by six strings and amplifiers. The laws of physics say so. But Floor seems to have shifted that limit. The band has a rhythm section, yes, but for the most part they sit in the background keeping time and filling what little gaps are left. The band eschews normal metal vocals, instead going for more of an alternative/indie rock style, and occasionally bury the vocals in the mix, as Fudge Tunnel often used to good effect.

And Fudge Tunnel is a good reference point, although Floor is less abrasive. There are other odd points of reference popping up in the mix too. One moment, it’s something like Jane’s Addiction’s trippier moments, the next, there are vocal melodies and harmonies which wouldn’t sound out of place in Weezer. And then there will be a sludge laden passage straight from the Iron Monkey playbook, followed by an un-stoned Down riff. It is all tied up with pop music sensibilities, with clean, clear vocals, short punchy songs, and lush melodies. And next moment it caves your chest in with a sledgehammer.

Best tracks? Irrelevant really, because this needs to be heard in its entirety, but at a push, first track “Scimitar” stands out because it really sets the album’s tone. “Sneech” is a minute of sludge metal filth. “Kallisti - Song For Eris” is deceptively blissed out but heavy. Closing track “Triangle Song” is pure downtuned doom ferocity, the most metal track on the album.

Do yourself a favour with this album. Don’t listen to it on your iPod or phone. This needs speakers, the biggest, best speakers you can find. It needs decibels, and the organic pulse of several cubic metres of air particles conducting sound waves to your ears. The furniture, walls and floor need to vibrate too. Maybe that’s where the band’s name came from, because you need to feel ‘Floor’ as much as listen to it.

aglasshouse (This is the second time I've written this review because I realized after I wrote it that Floor's Dove was comprised of songs recorded in 1994, and seeing as much of the said review was me comparing faults of the debut to Dove as if it was some sequel, I had to delete it because so much of it was incorrect. So, second time's the charm.)

"I don't have the wisdom that you think you've got."

The 90's underground scene of doom metal was practically filled to the brim with hard-noggin, shoe-gazing stoners that thriving as long as you looked the part was no big deal. Among the scene were bands that emphasized the fuzzy- a characteristic that even now dominates the genre. This fuzz focused on lumbering chords, linear musical variation, and most important of all- volume. Doom metal prided itself on being the loudest of the bunch, and not in the way that arena rock took the world by storm in the 80's. This, with a lack for a better term, loudness was more conceded than it's bombastic predecessors like Priest, Maiden, or hell even Sabbath, yet focused on power over purity. This latter mentality created a lot of lazy, ill-equipped bands that laid themselves under the moniker that doom metal's 90's scene was plagued with as much quality as it was mediocrity. But once in awhile, you come across a diamond in the rough.

This diamond I reefer to is Flordian act Floor, formed in 1992 in Hialeah. Floor had some differentiating qualities about them that made them stand out quite a bit. If bands like Cathedral, Candlemass and Pentagram's fuzz defined their loudness, then Floor made theirs with sheer distortion. The unrelenting warpedness of Floor was, in simple terms, unparalleled by anyone else. It's a power that's sort of hard to describe in word format, so I'll try to explain their legacy and their sound as best as I can.

Now Floor didn't exactly end up focusing much on personal output as they were more content to record split after split with other bands. In fact, the band's formal debut wasn't released until 2002. However in 1994 the band had scraped together enough material to create a sort of makeshift studio album, later to be released as "Dove" in 2004. Dove is a quirky little thing, sort of like a science-fair project haphazardly created out of glue and construction paper in the efforts to make some sort of tangible product to meet a deadline. It isn't exactly, well, cohesive, and it sure isn't a professionally made product. But I believe this quality is where Dove derives it's strong suits. The band is so amateurish that they didn't really feel the needed to have a damned bassist. Here are some of the charms.

Dove only has a short, 6-track-tracklist. The album only peaks a bit over the half-an-hour mark, with 18 minutes of that dedicated to the title track epic. Tracks 1-5 is where the album shines the brightest:'Who Are You' is less of a serious track and more of an embodiment of the caricature of metal, similarly portrayed by Queens of the Stone Age on the 2002 track 'Six Shooter', but it manages to get a point across pretty well in a short time. It and 'Namaste' sort of bleed into each other, although 'Namaste' does have some neat guitar hooks that give it personality. 'In A Day' is where the album picks up, granted in a more stoner direction, but picks up nonetheless. 'In A Day' is actually one of the more consistent songs of the Floor catalouge- utilizing both a consistent, pummeling drum hook and clever hardcore-punkesque vocal queues. 'Figure It Out' is my personal favorite of the album, as it starts with a wall-of-sound esque attitude blended with a sort of punk vocal style from Steve Brooks. 'Floyd' is more or less a delineation of a blurred line between the rampant distortion of Floor and the conceded form seen on prior tracks. It's good for what it is as I don't mind Floor when they're in no-man's-land.

But track 6 is the definite kicker. 'Dove', the massive 18 minute title track is a purposeful stain on an otherwise rather well-done album. Granted, it has it's moments, but as I once sat through it's entirety I came out with a feeling of discomfort. Not a positive feeling of discomfort one might have experiencing a thrill for the first time, but more along the lines of relief in an experience being over. This after-feeling is the death-stroke for me, and this track subconsciously goes straight into the bin because of it. But I will admit it has it's pros. The opening bit pure and honest Floor, acting like they would on one of their earlier splits. But the track just sort of dies a quarter of the way through, opting for either a confused screech or sad rumble, both of which are more akin to microphone feedback than music. I will give them credit, as they may have been going for a Esoteric-esque fuzzfest, but no matter how how ambitious it may be, it ends up falling ultimately flat. Same goes for 'Nothing I Remember', which is practically a carbon-copy.

Other than that however, Floor's Dove is quite the spectacle. I'd recommend it for fans of the underrated, the bold, the beautiful, and the doomy. Very good.