Localized Burn Heavy/Kingdom Of Magic

It's reassuring to know that, no matter what musical trends come and go, there are still plenty of outlandishly heavy bands sharpening their riffs in order to seduce unassuming emo and indie kids to the dark side of rock—or at least scare the shit out of them. Either way, the metal wins. Burn Heavy and Kingdom Of Magic, a pair of Denver's most bludgeoning guitar-worshippers, team up with a pair of songs each on a vinyl-only split EP (whose release will be celebrated with a co-headlining show at One Eyed Jacks tonight). The result is alluring as it is ear-ringing. Burn Heavy musters nearly 16 minutes of sludge on its cuts, "Wasting" and "Situations," two mammoth songs that pump Sabbath riffs full of horse tranquilizers and tosses them into a sea of Melvins-pumped darkness to sink or swim. They flounder a little under the weight but weather the storm through sheer force of sludge. Kingdom Of Magic—led by Luke Fairchild, frontman of Denver's far more frantic Git Some—gets a little more esoteric, lacing "Serpents" with violin and surrealist noise as it ambles through a stoned groove Spinal Tap could love (and that some emo band only dreams it could pull off). Sometimes reassurance comes from the most unlikely places.