Kev Rowland St. Petersburg’s most famous sludge stoner band are back with a two-track single, released in May 2020. The band have now been settled as a quartet for the last few years, and the line-up is Stas Vasilev (synths, guitars, vocals), Anton Khmelevskiy (guitar), Denis Zarutsky (bass) and Daniil Kornev (drums). The two songs may only total 12 minutes in length, but it is more than enough to hear that Zarutsky has really settled into the band and they are taking their sludge and stoner influences and moving it more into krautrock and space rock. It is incredibly dark, heavy bottom end, with synths creating yet more layers as opposed to bringing in light. This is powerful stuff and one can only hope that as it has already been two years since the last album, this heralds they will soon be back with their next long player. Fans of intense distorted and very heavy music would do well to seek this out.

Kev Rowland Here we have yet another release through the Russian no name label, who have certainly been putting out some intriguing albums over the last few years (as CDs by the way, not just digital like some small labels), and Pressor are no exception. The band was formed in 2008 in Kostroma, Russia under the name Leaden Sky by guitarist, vocalist and main songwriter Stanislav ‘Zoiner’ Vasiliev along with bassist Ilya Beschastnov with whom he had already been working with for a few years, mixing together funeral doom with death metal. Stan was also in the black metal band Nocturnlands with Anton Khmelevsky, and the following year Anton joined Leaden Sky on lead guitar. They started to move more towards sludge, changed the name to Pressor, and released their first EP.

Over the years there have been a few line-up changes, but Anton and Stas are still at the helm, and this is their latest EP, released in 2018. This is still sludge, but they have added just a few synths and Theremin, which mean they come across as stripped down incredibly heavy version of Hawkwind. I can imagine Lemmy listening to this and really enjoying it, as it has that same balls to the wall approach that his era with the ‘wind personified. No band name or EP title on the cover, just a psychedelic speaker stack, with the swirls carried through to the CD and inside the digipak. There are times when they are channelling early Sabbath and doom as well as sludge, but they pick up the tempo when the time is right, and with distorted vocals and heavy distortion everywhere it is almost as of Blue Cheer have been resurrected. This is also available through Bandcamp, and fans of this style of music really should seek this out and discover what is happening in Russia, as this will surprise you all. Solid.