II

With its sophomore studio album, simply titled II, the Belgian sludge band SardoniS builds the kind of instrumental doom metal that could soundtrack a Werner Herzog documentary about Vikings. “Burial of Men” opens at a crawling pace. The abysmal rumbling of colossal guitar distortion is so deep that by the end of the song’s six-and-a-half-minute span, you may still not have noticed that the band doesn't use a bass. At half that length, the following “Warmonger” is the shortest song here. But with a rapid-fire rhythm, it’s also the most aggressive; as its title suggests, it'd be easy to envision a bloody ground battle ensuing alongside its pummeling rhythms. The gargantuan riffs that gradually build into a locomotive dynamic in “The Drowning” recall the slow, elongated layering in Sleep’s “From Beyond” that rewards patient listeners with a stoner-rock crescendo. “Entering the Woods” is as haunting as its foreboding title. The call and response between guitar and drums creates a tense anxiety, culminating in a full-throttled speed-metal instrumental. The nearly 10-minute “Aftermath of Battles” closes dramatically.