Boston doom/sludge newcomers Lesser Glow arrived on the scene this year with their debut, Ruined, a dream-like but vaguely menacing cascade of echoing riffs. Noisy and meandering, it needs a few listens to fully appreciate.

In between ragged shrieks and hoarse shouts come soft, clean vocals, sounding as if sung on the other side of a huge abyss separating the band from the listener. However, the vocals are the only softness to be found in the overall soundscape, a crushing leviathan of bending riffs and ringing melodies punctuated with sputtering guitar blowouts. The band's clean-vocaled musings, offset by the shouts, give the tracks a post-hardcore vibe, or a Soilwork-like modernity, but everything is stretched out to the point that there's space for the instruments to operate. Unlike many hardcore-influenced albums, there's space for complexity and riffing here.

Tel Meggido is the best example of the band's ability to generate a distorted atmosphere -- not so much sludge as fog, blurring the outlines of the melody --, but the band's always willing to drift off into fugues of doomy grooves. The second-to-last track is an instrumental whose sole purpose is setting the stage for the final wandering journey, Under the Polar Share; that track, which began with howls of agony, ends with gentle resignation, fading out into the night.

An interesting combination of genres and ideas, Ruined probably won't last for more than a few spins on my playlist, but it's a decent listen. Fans of some earlier crossover groove/doom/post-metal experiments such Pet Slimmers of the Year, which we reviewed quite a long time ago, might be interested in this one.