Praise for Monarch!‘s Sabbat Noir from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records:  We listed this on vinyl a few lists back, the most recent epic slab of slow motion dronesludge dirgery from these French doomsters. The vinyl is now out of print , but now it’s on CD, which in some ways is even better, as it’s a single track, which on the LP was split in two, but here has been restored to it’s singularly epic sprawl…

Here’s what we had to say about Sabbat Noir the first time around:

Latest from these French ultra doom sludgelords and sludgelady, a single album-long track, an oozing, lugubrious, blackened slow motion tarpit crawl, and if it was even possible, Sabbat Noir sounds and feels even more abstract and spaced out than any of the other Monarch!’s, which is saying a lot. Sabbat Noir is also the band’s first proper full length to feature their new drummer, Robert from the Grey Daturas, who makes himself right at home, his spare hard hitting style perfectly suited to Monarch’s weirdly dreamy doomic drift.

The record / song begins with a dense cloud of rumbles and whirs, a slow motion sub-SUNN guitar crawl, wrapped in shimmery cymbal sizzle, an epic, smoldering, slow building low end creep. Thick, almost liquid guitars ooze beneath abstract drumming, the hits ages apart, long stretches of layered guitardrone, a nearly stalled doom, that hovers and floats more than crushes or pummels. The vocals exist way off in the distance, haunting and spectral, just another layer of slow shifting sound, which gives way here and there to hushed ambience. It’s not so much a song as a sound, drifty and shimmery, and nearly ambient, it’s not until halfway through that things get a little mathy and metal, the riffs coalescing into black hole crunch, the drums pounding out an almost-rhythm.

The song continues its tarpit creep, streaked with feedback, the vocals moving gradually to the fore, their presence more intense, the riffs coalescing into a more traditional doom, mournful and melancholy, like Paradise Lost or My Dying Bride, but slowed waaaaaay down. The now shrieked vox drifting over this lumbering swoonsome dour doomic miserablism, a gorgeous, desolate, somber dronedoom, that slowly sheds the doom, eventually blissing back out into some more blackened guitardrone dreaminess.

The CD packaging, like the lp packaging, is incredible, super glossy, metallic prismatic jackets, you have to see them to believe them, easily one of the coolest looking covers ever, the front cover the Monarch! logo all shiny and metallic over what appears to be hair, but follow that hair to the other side of the sleeve where you’ll find a sexy evil pic of Monarch!’s vocalist Emilie all corpsepainted and hoTT!

At 40 years old, Aquarius is the oldest independent record store in San Francisco. We try to only carry music we love, and we’re always searching for more new, cool, weird and wonderful music. All of which we then share with you, our loyal customers.