.png)
Cattle Hammer - Dark Thoughts With Lights Out
.png)
Out now via Road to Masochist - Cattle Hammer’s Dark Thoughts With Lights Out functions like a controlled collapse, with four extended movements designed to reduce emotion, time, and self perception to base matter. This release formalises the intent first made explicit with the band’s 71-minute endurance piece Methlehem.
Formed in 2023 by Duncan Wilkins, whose history with Fukpig, Mistress, and Anaal Nathrakh looms large, Cattle Hammer operate within blackened sludge and drone, but treat those genres as tools instead of identities. Gloomsower opens the record with suffocating restraint, riffs moving at a glacial crawl while vocals sound trapped behind structural mass. The production is blunt, refusing separation between instruments and emotion.
Rotting sharpens the psychological edge, its spoken judgement cutting through monolithic guitar work that feels like progression through complete erosion. Watchmen, Alone introduces fragmentation, brief spasms of noise interrupting the slow violence before collapsing back into oppressive momentum. The closing Body Puzzle cements the disassembly, its scale vast and impersonal, closing the record without release nor resolution.
Nothing here seeks catharsis. The reward, if it exists, lies in endurance and clarity. Dark Thoughts With Lights Out is deliberately hostile, rigorously focused, and uncompromising. It stands as a severe but coherent debut from a band fully committed to its own way of life.
SCORE 8/10
Words by LearnTwoExist
In collaboration with Headbangers Australia