Discover the sound of "Dark witch doom" with Japan's BlackLab

Blacklab promo pic 2018

Osaka, Japan’s “Dark witch doom duo”, BlackLab might not be the first band to jack themselves into the Black Sabbath power source, but few have managed to channel it into something quite as capricious as their debut album. Due to be released outside their native Japan on July 20 via New Heavy Sounds - and remixed by Wayne Adams for maximum impact - their debut album, Under The Strawberry Moon 2.0, crackles with fiery fuzz energy, corals itself into primitivist grooves, yanks your consciousness with shifted tempos and summons up monotone, tuned-to-a-higher-frequency incantations and acid-gargling outbursts as vocalist/guitarist Yuko Morino and drummer Chia Shiraishi, lock together like nuclei undergoing a seismic, radiation-induced mutation.

So potent is the album’s power, in fact, that it’s torn free of the flow of time and appeared right here two days earlier, to be captured by powerful magnets and streamed in all its supercharged glory. So if you want to know roughly how it feels to have your brain flossed with razor wire, then run to your Van der Graaf generator, wave your hands over it like it was a crystal ball, and bang your head silly to Under The Strawberry Moon 2.0 right here!

Check out BlackLab's Facebook page here

And pre-order Under The Strawberry Moon 2.0 here!

Jonathan Selzer

Having freelanced regularly for the Melody Maker and Kerrang!, and edited the extreme metal monthly, Terrorizer, for seven years, Jonathan is now the overseer of all the album and live reviews in Metal Hammer. Bemoans his obsolete superpower of being invisible to Routemaster bus conductors, finds men without sideburns slightly circumspect, and thinks songs that aren’t about Satan, swords or witches are a bit silly.