REDRIGHTHAND - They Sang And Chanted... CD

I've been involved in albums that have taken a long time to come out before (usually my fault) but this one takes the biscuit! Originally recorded in 2004 this record never saw the light of day and has until now been doing the rounds on the blog circuit and talked about in hushed veneration throughout the underground.
I've had this recording for about fie years now and it still sounds as utterly heavy as the first time I was blown away by it!
RRH played quite a bit in the UK and built up quite a name for themselves over the years, and this record is a perfect distillation of their sound: incredibly slow, interminably heavy and possessing an atmosphere of complete and utter despair that I don't think has been matched since. For me, this record is probably the best document of the UK sludge/doom sound and should be held in the same regard as many others who have came and went since. The bands other members were in/went on to be in speaks for itself: vocalist Peet was in Hard To Swallow and Narcosis, Robbo went on to do They Are Cowards, Thomas and Paul were both in Charger and now play in Ocksen, and Paul Rauschen was in Like A Kind Of Matador and went on to At War's own Gruel.
I'm very chuffed to be the label finally putting this out and opening it up to a bigger audience at long last!

500 copies, regular jewel case with "manifesto" insert hidden behind the CD tray.

The Sleeping Shaman:
redrighthand walked the dark trenches of sludge a few years back and they were always an awesome band to watch and listen to live. Raw, vibrant, and bleak, the down tuned guitars accentuated the visceral despair people were feeling within the punk, grindcore and sludge scene. In 2004 the band recorded this album reflecting an urgency that came with a lot of music being written at that time. Although redrighthand were firmly part of these three scenes, what they played was slower than a stoned sloth climbing across the canopy of a green silk sky.
This album is therefore a posthumous release having taken another seven years for this recording to emerge out of the gloom and into the world. As with so many releases of this type, there is always a danger the music may have dated badly resulting in the album missing the contemporary sludge boat. Well it's time to wake up from your green induced coma motherlickers because this release is going to knock you off your feet. Sludge bands have become increasingly impotent as they turn to the easy option of slowing hardcore riffs down, in contrast this redrighthand album signals to the many where the bands have been going wrong. This does not even feel like a posthumous release, it knocks you down with a refreshing athletic slow dive punch to the head. From the moment you listen to the full majestic grimness of this album you will come to realise how shite a lot of the so-called sludge bands are nowadays. You may think redrighthand were before their time, but you would be diminishing the moment of their heaviest domination, something that I would prefer to hold onto, mainly because I have such fond memories of them ripping up a storm. Instead I like to think of this as a lesson on how to open up the wounds, caress the lesions of history and say fuck you to the mediocrity stifling the current sludge scene.
On this album we have four songs that are all similar in their attack and overall presence. Never one to let the intensity die or be subsumed by some introspective shoe gazing, "the angel of silence", "like gold debased, like shit", "a bodiless heart", "this life is a monument to ruin" are unrelenting in their intensity. Each song builds on the previous track with a body count of tortured torn throat spewed aggression. Aggressive and yet refreshing, each song should be likened to having a shot of Tequila but with a subtle twist, rather than putting salt on the side of your hand you place crushed glass. Feel it rip through your digestive tract, let the tone, the depth, the coverage of the mammoth produced, peel your eyelids to the back wall. Succumb to the pain and the pleasure redrighthand offers up. This is a thing of dark eroticism crushed by a savage embrace, and within all this discomfort focus on the production of beauty and foreboding.
Just one thing I would like to request after listening to this release for days…will redrighthand please reform so I can once again watch them tear the world apart? If you think you know your shit when it comes to sludge you should have already bought a copy of this beast, if you haven't bought a copy all I need to ask is why haven't you? Fuck free downloads and support the label. For all of you who didn't see them back when they were terrorizing the UK, redrighthand were truly an awesome band, and unusually for a release, this really captures what you missed. This blows my mind! Earth shatteringly good!!!!