Finland is a bleak and depressing place. It has one of the highest suicide rate among males in the entire world. Everyone I know who lives in Finland is constantly depressed, whether it’s because of the nearly constant grey skies or because there’s just nothing to do, they fucking hate life in Finland. With so much gloom in the country it should come as no surprise that they are home to one of the most crushing droning sludge doom bands on the planet.

Stumm is a Finnish sludge drone doom act consisting of three of the most troubled individuals in metal. Their debut full length, I, is one of the slowest, most depressing and pain-fueled efforts I’ve ever heard. With four tracks clocking in at thirty-five and a half minutes, Stumm slowly pummel the senses with down tuned bass and guitars with the distortion set high to make every slow, painful riff tear through the listener like a dull blade, slowly cutting deeper into the skin, making every ripple of the bass feel like a thousand bees stinging your head and ears.

The pained howls of vocalist and guitarist Jukka Mattila are almost disturbing. The anguish he unleashes is incredible, it sounds like someone slowly being dismembered, first a tip of a finger is cut off, then the tip of a toe, then an ear. Before long he’s left a bloody, tattered mess, howling in endless pain.

Stumm’s I isn’t an album for people into mid-paced doom, it’s not for people into riffs, it’s not for people into catchy melodies. I is for people into pain and suffering and can handle thirty-five and a half minutes of slow, droning anguish. I is not an easy album to get into, it’s not an easy album to enjoy, but if you are sick and depraved enough this album will remain stuck in your stereo, playing on an endless loop until you go mad and slam your face into a brick wall. Crawling, slow doom with a deep low-end distortion. I fucking love this disc even though it makes me want to break a pane of glass and slice my jugular with a jagged shard! Amazing!

Written By: Teufel