Floor

Last year marked the debut, self-titled full-length of the long-running, indie doom outfit Floor, who until that point had released only seven-inches and made compilation appearances. Yet in 1994, the seminal Miami-based line-up of drummer Jeff Sousa and future Cavity guitarists Steve Brooks and Anthony Vialon recorded an album’s worth of Melvins-esque sludge rock that went inexplicably unreleased, until now. Heavily influenced by New Orleans muckrakers Eyehategod, the seven "new” songs feature feedback-screeching intros and bridges, lengthened swampcore grooves and half-screamed/half-sung vocals. Opener "Who Are You,” is closer to Black Sabbath than the Who, but is a cover of neither. Cavity is the touchstone here, sounding more like a tribute to 1996’s Somewhere Between The Train Station And The Dumping Grounds. "Namasté” is more rollicking doomcore, coming closer to the band’s first EP on Rhetoric, and "In A Day” starts out hesitantly with Brooks’s almost-spoken verses, before the down-tuned walls crush all in their paths. "Figure It Out” is the album’s most curious track, serving as a note-for-note precursor to the more deliberate "Figured Out,” recorded almost a decade later for the Floor album. The dirge-like "Floyd,” was previously released on the long-deleted Madonna seven-inch on Bovine, but the 18-minute title track lopes along like vintage Cathedral, then drones like Earth, and detonates like Khanate. At 15 minutes, the equally tortuous instrumental "I Remember Nothing,” is almost industrial in its chordal repetition, like Reverend Bizarre covering Godflesh. Sure to peeve fans of the newer, upbeat material, Dove is pure quagmire doom that hardly hints at what is — or was — yet to come from Floor.