So the spring equinox found me digging not so much on the sun but on Earth. As I’ve written before, this is one of my favorite bands because at times I have both a long attention span and the metabolic drive of a 20-foot python that’s just eaten a pony. Hibernaculum (Southern Lord) hardly even counts as a new release—three classic tracks redone in the band’s current sparse, plodding style, along with “A Plague of Angels”, previously only available on a tour-only split 12-inch with Sunn0)))—but that doesn’t matter. New is relative, and new material from these guys comes out sounding ancient right out of the box anyway. The really nice part of the package is a DVD with interviews and live footage, which is gloriously boring in a way that has all the decadent luxury of imagining oneself to be, say, a giant fungus organism with millennia on its spores.
