They say music can soothe the savage beast. But what about the times when the music proves the more beastly of the two? The moments when the feral creature might run for safety from the music that is far more monstrous than it?

If you’re looking for the latter, consider Body Void’s Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth, a positively eldritch piece of sludge metal that leaves no wonder as to why anyone would call a genre that. It’s as black and thick as tar, and just like the thousands of specimens at Le Brea, there is no savage beast that bears a chance of survival.

There is a term I have come to use frequently in these reviews, and that is “oppressively heavy.” I use it when I’m faced with a piece of music so loud and crushing that, were the tones manifest into matter, I would be unable to escape its weight. Of course, music doesn’t have a physical form. We use the word “heavy” to describe certain musical attributes: low chords, distorted tones, various rhythmic tendencies, etc. But none of those things have any real physical weight.

However, if you were to play Bury Me… and put a scale near the speakers, it might just move the needle. The tracklist is comprised of four tracks, each longer than twelve minutes. The bass is tuned so low you can hear the space between peaks in the waveforms. The guitar tone is so gnarled that the notes seem like they’re fighting to stay above the surface of hum and feedback. The tempos move at a tectonic pace, the drums stretching out the space between hits as far as possible while still constituting a beat, occasionally bursting into a rapid earthquake sprint of blast beats somewhere between punk and black metal.. Vocals are shrieked in a baleful wail that does not relent.

It is an oppressive listen. There is nary a moment of relief from the volume or violence it casts forth. And sometimes, that is exactly what the doctor ordered. This won’t get many repeat listens on my turntable, but each of those moments will be seismic events.