Grave Next Door Drop New Single “As Heavy As Texas”

My sleep has gone sideways this week, but it’s given me some late nights and early mornings to chill with Michigan dark stoner metal outfit GRAVE NEXT DOOR. Indeed, it’s ideal for those quiet, surreal moments of solitude – and however loud you wish to audit it, for it is the vibe that pervades and creates a kind of dank Saturday night at 1:30am feel.

I intuit the influence of early Soundgarden on a song like “Bloody Nuns” – you know, back when Soundgarden was raw, uncouth, and entirely underground. “Witch Head” wafts the muddy lo-fi recording ambience of ‘90s Godflesh and Fudge Tunnel. “Charnel House” gives me the gritted teeth of vintage Kurt Cobain. “Heathen” channels Prong. In fact, every song on 'Sanctified Heathen’ (2022) is a romping adventure into another unanticipated situation. You dare not underestimate a single track you meet on these mean streets (stick with “Witch Head” a little longer).

This weekend, Doomed & Stoned is giving you an advance listen to “As Heavy As Texas,” the latest single to emerge from the band’s debut LP. It begins with some righteous slow shredding (a shot of warmth splashed across my spine at this Sleep-esque moment). It’s joined by Travis Soleski’s thumping beat, and chanting vocals follow. What’s this? A chorus I might be singing on the way to work in the morning.

On the recording, production, and themes the band comments:

Our approach was raw all the way and we achieved that with a very raw '70s and '80s sound, enabling us to capture our live energy on the record. When we started as a band, we said we would never put anything on an album that we couldn’t do live. The common threads throughout the songs are of personal struggles, despair, and various aspects of death. The album is set to release in the spring on Black Doomba Records and we greatly look forward to supporting it with a tour.

Jump-started by Patrick and Anthony Salerno in 2018, the brothers decided to name the band after a graveyard that was adjacent to their house. Did you hear me? IT WAS RIGHT NEXT DOOR. I know, you hard atheists say there’s no such thing, but imagine the ghost stories! Grave Next Door describes the resulting sound as “dark and macabre, drawing from the iconic sounds of Black Sabbath, Black Flag, and even Cream.”

On Sanctified Heathen the band reveals their powers with old school ethos and ambience, diggable lyrics that touch relevantly on our fucked-up world (and often existence), and a downtuned sound that is often-times intimidating. Grave Next Door is the new face of Street Doom.

Again, the band:

“As Heavy As Texas” is the first song we wrote after COVID cut our tour short to play festivals in Austin in March of 2020. It was a strange time, as we watched the world shut down and one of us became very ill. A friend took us in for three days and we soaked in the landscape and ambiance of Texas. There was this feeling in riff and rhythm that personified our extremely bizarre and positive experience. People at the venues were thanking us for not canceling out as other bands had. The Texas metal community has the most hospitable people on earth. The song wrote itself in literally ten minutes. We even returned to Texas to film the music video for the song.

Heavy stuff.  Sanctified Heathen by Grave Next Door drops March 18 on Black Doomba Records.

Give ear…