Praise for Howl‘s Full of Hell from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records: What’s not to love about these guys (and gal)? Crushing, riff heavy grooves, sludgey, and Southern sounding (even though they’re from Rhode Island), downtuned, low slung, brutal, but weirdly catchy too, with a bit of a post rock vibe here and there, totally headbangable and epic.

If you had to situate Howl sonically, they would probably fall somewhere between Baroness, High On Fire, Soilent Green, and Sleep, you get the drift. A sort of stonery Sabbathy sludge, that doesn’t wallow in tarpit tempos, but instead bulldozes through dense clouds of grinding buzz, slipping from midtempo crush to woozy metallic swing, to blasting thrashing pummel. The drums like battering rams, the guitars murky and muddy, with occasional bursts of psychedelic leads, that help balance the band’s predominant low low low end. The vocals a monstrous bellow,  and all that wound into churning, almost proggy arrangements, some of the moments recall the heaving might of Neurosis, while others, channel classic metal into something way more dark and dirgey.

The whole record is a headspinning, neck snapping riff fest, but the final track, “The Day Of Rest” might be our favorite, the slowest and most sprawling of the bunch, slipping from serpentine Sabbathy slither to cool start stop ultra dynamic lurch and lumber, to almost Maideny melodicism, churning chug underpinned by pounding double kick drumming, while guitars harmonize over the top, before getting almost shoegazey near the end, finally winding down with some droned out layered guitar feedback. Fuck Yeah.

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.