Album Review: Olde – Pilgrimage (Seeing Red Records/Sludgelord Records)

Canadian sludge and doom outfit, Olde return with their brand-new album, Pilgrimage. To be released via Seeing Red Records (North America) and Sludgelord Records (Europe) on March 19th, 2021.

Dirty and ugly sounding sludge balanced with flavour-filled doom, Olde’s Pilgrimage is one to sink into the mire with. Eight tracks of slow filth that makes everything feel sticky and loose. Even when the rhythm has a touch more pep to it.

It’s all about the riffs here. Riffs that have the weight of mountains and the power to crack holes in the earth. Olde providing variety and surprises by the bucket load and making each track feel very much like its own thing.

Helping the riffs have much more impact are vocals that growl and gruff, bass that hums likes flies over a swamp and drums that hammer stake after stake in. Then there are the top-shelf guitar solos that comes from guests like “Chewy” Daniel Mongrain of Voivod and Nichol S. Robertson. It’s continuously and unfailingly heavy while also being constantly interesting.

Highlights include; A New King with its maddening guitar solo, In Defiance with its added atmosphere and the eye-watering doominess plus weird saxophone solo of The Dead Hand. Three good examples of the diversity that Olde have going on which isn’t always something you can say about sludge and doom music.

It’s a hell of an album and drowning in it is far easier then you might expect. There are worse ways to go!

Olde – Pilgrimage Full Track Listing:

1. Pilgrimage
2. A New King
3. Medico Della Peste
4. In Defiance
5. The Dead Hand
6. Depth Charge
7. Under Threatening Skies
8. Wastelands

Links

Bandcamp | Facebook | Seeing Red Records | Sludgelord Records