Blackened sludge metal out of Madison, WI to give voice to a once sacred, now defiled and ravaged terrain, Bereft play a deeply atmospheric hybrid of black metal and sludge metal, placing them in a uniquely crushing category of extreme metal with other chimeric monstrosities like Stone Titan and Chicago’s own Lord Mantis (circa their 2017 LP Lands- the subject of this write up). Think Agalloch meets Baroness, with all the aspirational and uplifting parts sucked out and replaced by earth-cracking, tarry guitar dirges and despair-inducing primal howls. This is bleak, acerbic, and enveloping metal music that is as compelling as it is desolate... and it’s pretty fackin' desolate. Lands is Bereft’s second album and first with Prosthetic Records. Brace yourself for the leviathanic “We Wept” with its lumbering, impossibly heavy bass which collides with knotted guitar dirges under pained howls and other vocal lamentations before exploding into a fury of tremolo-picking and ruthless blast beats, “The Ritual” which leads in with Agalloch-esc ambient guitars before unfurling into weighty funeral march with an ever-quickening tempo which ramps up into a tug-of-war between swampy mid-tempo chords and a dissonant stomp of blast beats and demonic guitars, and (lastly) the devastating fourteen minute closer, “Waning Light” with its gargantuan, rolling riffs that produce the auditory sensation of being swallowed in the yawning mow of a tremor with brief reprieves of rippling ethereal guitars to break the filthy, clausterphobic tension. This land isn't your land, this land isn't my land, this land belongs to the dead.