From their EPK, “AZELL are a two piece, female-fronted doom/sludge metal band, featuring the gut-wrenching vocals of Courtney Napier. Their debut album, “Death Control,” sets tales of alien abduction, unfathomable powers and the torturous ending of human existence to a soundtrack of colliding worlds…surrounded by madness, surrounded by hunger, surrounded by everything but death ,I knew death was our only way out.” The album has ten songs.

The title track is the first cut, and talk about sludge…this music is so thick it sounds like you are caught in quicksand and slowly drowning…very slowly. The kind of slow that takes weeks as a matter of fact, and the vocals are agonizing. “A.M.” has a similar sound. It is so slow and tortuous, that time almost seems to stop. At times, the vocals turn deadly guttural, and Courtney’s versatility in that regard is strong. “Apocalypse Verdict” is slightly faster, but those enormous riff strikes are weighted enough to bring a skyscraper to its knees. The vocals “chew” as well, almost as it an old man is gumming some meat…this will take some time. “Chemical Chains” is another dirty offering that seems to even blot out the sun’s rays.

“Wallow” has a steadier pace akin to a beast wandering an endless tundra of ice that has no foreseeable end, and it almost seems as if his fate is to wander this for the remainder of his long life. “End it All” has some Punk attitude to it in the pacing, in the length, and even in its attitude, and it’s unlike the other songs in that regard. “You Failed Me” sounds like the angry, vengeful words of a dying man, recounting a wrong that happened decades ago, but the fury still rages. The riffs are crushing, and the vocals come from a beguiled siren summoning unsuspecting sailors to their death.

The hairy, overgrown beast titled “Echoes of Eternity” closes the album. The guitars sound like a motor revving, and the bell strikes foretell your room. The riff repeats to the point that your head is sufficiently bloody. Overall, this album is at the very deep end of Sludge and Doom Metal, the point you reach that if it were to be any deeper or extend even an inch further, you would be swallowed by the darkness.