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"Blackened sludge" is a vacuum, something so stylistically conservative it renders the majority of its participants into damning homogeneity. In short: most of it just sounds the same. Slow riffs, raw tones, harsh vocals… where is the creativity? Even a small piece of new nuance and artistic flexing would completely turn the style on its side, if even for a moment. For such a clean-slate performing style, one would think there would be some vast sense of variety and intra-band-unit identity, and yet each band seemingly influences the other on a rote basis. Who will be this genre's savior, and how?

Rhode Island matter crushers Churchburn appear to be the first in this "blackened sludge" wasteland to truly step up to the plate and make a full-force swing. Listen to an exclusive premiere of their new single "Authorized to Cleanse" below.

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From their upcoming album None Shall Live… The Hymns of Misery (what a title), Churchburn takes the "devastator"'s route, finding new and interesting ways to communicate the acrid, dead wasteland of blackened sludge's sonic conceit, but with a deeper sense of passion and dread attached to it. Using a vast, melodic sound palette, "Authorized to Cleanse"'s balanced bludgeon adds a more emotive, human element to this idea of the apocalypse and pure misanthropy. It is pure, hateful misery, and hating everything must be a lonely existence. Featuring some sorely missed fretboard acrobatics from frontman and guitar hero Dave Suzuki (ex-Vital Remains), there is an unexpected metal backbone which keeps Churchburn upright, much more than the punk and hardcore-inflicted spirit of most sludgey doom. Churchburn interests themselves in expressing themselves in extremes -- metal, shred, volume, bottom-end, emotion -- so why limit themselves to a simple existence? The world they hate is so much more complex than that.

None Shall Live… The Hymns of Misery will be released July 13th on Armageddon Label. Preorders are now open for LP, CD, and cassette formats.

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