"Baltimore based Grave Domain is the one-man metal/hard rock/goth creation of one Shel Plock who took the name from a character he found flipping through a Dungeons & Dragons spell book. Proudly lo-fi in attitude, Grave Domain thunder through such songs as 'Death Notices' and 'Across the Acheron' with a rabid kaleiodoscopic energy, enhanced with strains of psyched-out 70s synthesizer for cheap splatter movie soundtrack effect. Plock signs/burns out with 'Deth Bed' [sic], a great, mad rant squawked through a shredded microphone, as a roiling junk-heap of broken electric guitars and crushed electronics crashes behind him." — The Wire (Issue 475 September 2023) reader.exacteditions.com/issues/111730/search?q=grave+domain

"Something of a concept album... the new collection introduces a 'host of characters' with a prevailing horror theme, track by track. Grave Domain leans into its influences as a 'pastiche of heavy metal, hard rock, and gothic influences derived from music, comic books, and horror novels alike, stitched together like some Frankenstein’s monster with a taste for the anthemic.'" — Wildfire wildfiremusic.net/2023/08/15/grave-domains-horror-themed-self-titled-debut-emerged-from-lo-fi-heavy-metal-demos

Listening to Grave Domain's debut release, you will meet a host of characters — all willing to carry you off to the afterworld. On the first track, the ghosts hunt the ghost hunters. While on the second, an obituary turns out to be a bit too familiar. Psychopomps reign over the middle of the album, offering guidance along the way to the unknown. The penultimate song is a cover of an anthem of reincarnation by Demon — a band with roots in the NWOBHM. And the closing song brings it all together, reminding the listener that the time we have is not much, but it's all we've got.


About...

Rising from the swampy mists of the lower Patapsco River, something's fermenting. It's not the usual dead fish or discarded cadavers. It's Grave Domain. A band conjured by Shel Plock, a so-called musician whose roots stretch back into Baltimore’s grimy 90s rock and experimental scenes like tentacles in the dark. You are about to take a trip through these marshes and the even darker realm that exists just below them. So wear your galoshes, for goodness’ sake. And you might bring some coin change, just to be on the safe side.

Grave Domain emerged in 2022. And before the emergence of Grave Domain, Shel sang about werewolves with The Violencestring — described by Foxy Digitalis as “a free jazz Tommy”. And before that, he helped start a punk label called AmBiguous City Records and in his spare time put out enough homemade cassettes to make sure that every tiny label specializing in weird music between 1989 and 1999 was able to write off its post office box as a hazard zone. Through much of the late Aughts and early Teens, he was part of the Red Room Collective and helped with the High Zero Festival. And then he disappeared for a bit, during which time he allegedly played in a honky-tonk band, started a black metal commune, and pursued seminal work in semantic technology. Allegedly.

Now, he's back to the heavy roots of his music, but with the addition of a literary voice honed from years on the fringes. Grave Domain is a reflection of this journey, a retrospective, and a preview of what awaits on the opposite side of the abyss. One part rock band, one part spiritual agitator, one part provider of standup punch lines — delivered with a wink and an outstretched hand. This is psychopomp music. Climb on board, we need you to paddle.


"One of the highlights of the album is the title track ‘Grave Domain’, it’s eerie and sonically haunting, and certainly serves as the focal point of the album, blending all of the sensibilities of punk from yesteryear along with plenty of gusto." — God is in the TV


Released 2023 on Weirdjazz as WJ20230002 (LR-2197607).