Long believed to be the unluckiest day on the calendar, Friday the 13th is associated with everything from stubbed toes and lost keys to hockey-masked lunatics and dead campers. What better way to chase of the bad vibes than with some gloomy, doomy metal?
Desolate Grace are a tight, instrumental three-piece from Portland. Their sound is pure sludge rock, a low, gritty brand of metal steeped in classic rock, with sudden changes in rhythm and tempo that keep the songs fresh and exciting.
A favorite on the international metal scene, Portland's own Ocean upset more conventional acts to see 2008's Pantheon of the Lesser win the Portland Music Award for album of the year. Ocean's music fits their moniker, creating vast soundwaves that shift with the eternal motion of the tides. Thick distortion, squalls of feedback, lumbering tempos, and howled, echoing vocals evoke images of a massive undersea volcanic eruption. With little more than guitars and over-cranked tube amps, Ocean rumbles like tectonic plates shifting and flows like lava.
Related:
Krallice, Ocean, Ludicra, AoK Suicide Forest, Moms rock!, Leaves of Life from Arborea, and other Portland music news, More 
- Krallice, Ocean, Ludicra, AoK Suicide Forest
At Geno’s, April 16
- Moms rock!
Some moms decide, from heartbeat one of ultrasound, that they aren’t going to let a small (i.e., life-changing) thing like motherhood get in the way of their art.
- Leaves of Life from Arborea, and other Portland music news
BUCK AND SHANTI CURRAN , the husband-and-wife team behind ethereal folk band ARBOREA , have been touring nearly non-stop and curating compilations right from their home base in Lewiston.
- The outsiders
Ocean's album Pantheon of the Lesser — a two-track, hour-long, deconstructionist monster — is the linchpin of what's become an exciting moment for the Portland doom metal four-piece.
- Letters to the Portland editor: March 20,2009
Just read the article ("The Outsiders," by Christopher Gray, February 27) and wanted to say thanks.
- Music Seen: Ocean and Pontiak
The day after Ocean's predictably under-attended (30-40 people) Cinco de Mayo performance at SPACE, a friend who also attended asked what I thought. "So loud," I said. "So slow," he responded. It wasn't hard to catch the reverence in both reactions.
- Music Seen: Ghosthunter, Antiseptic, + Shabti
Lewiston's Ghosthunter are generally classified as "punk," but their songs often veer into doomy sludge-rock reminiscent of bands like Electric Wizard and Sleep.
- Ripple effect
The Portland Phoenix launched in 1999, just as the Portland music scene was turning.
- Music Seen: Ogre's farewell show
It's never easy saying goodbye to a friend.
- Music Seen: Book Of The Dead, Apocryphonic, Surreal Vision
With as many talented musicians as there are in Portland, the occasional "super-group" is inevitable.
- Short-form Portland
I can hear the snarky comments already: "What?!? Rustic Overtones put out an album this year and Pfeifle hasn't fallen all over himself naming it #1? The sky is green!" But this isn't 1999. It's 2009. And it isn't all that strange for a phenomenal album to hit Portland's city streets anymore.
- Less
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New England Music News
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, Entertainment, Music, Entertainment Awards, Music Awards, Dan Clark, Ocean, Ocean, Geno’s, Geno’s, Pantheon of the Lesser, Less
