Every week, Nic Huber will dissect the heavy riffs of bands — new and old — in The Wednesday Sludge. This week's band is a California doom outfit that know a thing or two about sludge.
It makes sense that one of the colder winters in California history would help produce an aggressively depressing debut from LA's Sixes, a black and sludgy doom band that proves the two sub-genres do not have to be mutually exclusive.
The band's first single, "A Cross To Burn," was recorded deep in the snow-covered mountains at 13 O'Clock Studios in Arrowbear, California, and, for a band that has only been together since 2016, it is a hell of debut.
Like all good sludge bands, Sixes know their way around menacing feedback that will probably give you an irregular heartbeat (or best case scenario: tinnitus). Adding to the crushing riffs from frontman Stephen Cummings and guitarist Hannes Bogacs, Cummings' vocal delivery gives the song another layer of ferocity by mixing Kirk Windstein's bellows with high-pitched shrills that sound like the dude from Thou.
According to The Obelisk, the doom quartet use unconventional amplifier and cabinet combinations to create the unique tones heard in "A Cross To Burn" which adds the extra finesse. I'll probably be posting about Sixes again, as they are getting ready to enter the studio later this year to record their full-length debut.
Sixes is opening for Conan and North on May 10 at the Complex in LA. For those of us not lucky enough to live on the West Coast, we'll just have to settle with this hazy ritualistic lyric video for "A Cross To Burn:"
