Stay Dead Beneath The Weight Of The Worlds Review
Stay Dead
Beneath The Weight Of The Worlds
Ripple Music
2026
Here's a Sludge/Doom album I never saw coming, and it hit me like a sack of bricks.
The album is “Beneath The Weight Of The Worlds”, and the band is Stay Dead. The lineup is made up of members from High Desert Queen, Chains Of Aggression, Unto Thee, and several others. That's enough to get your attention, but the real story isn't who's in the band, it's why the band exists.
Stay Dead was assembled by U.S. Army veteran Christopher Borrelli as a form of healing and therapy to help him process the PTSD he carried home from his military service. That alone put me in a certain headspace before I even pressed play.
I'm not a veteran, so I can't pretend to understand that experience firsthand, but I've always had tremendous respect for those who serve and the sacrifices they make. I've also got plenty of opinions about how many veterans are treated once they come home, and unfortunately, those conversations are just as heavy as this record. Knowing that history changes how you hear these songs.
Ryan Garney of High Desert Queen steps behind the microphone, and if you're familiar with his work, you already know he brings a ton of emotion with him. His performance here is exactly what these songs needed. The riffs are crushing, the atmosphere is thick enough to choke on, but Garney's melodic approach keeps everything grounded. Instead of getting buried beneath the weight of the music, the emotion rises right to the surface.
Clocking in at roughly thirty-five minutes, “Beneath The Weight Of The Worlds” carries more emotional weight than albums twice its length. Grief has a way of finding the listener, and with every spin this record seemed to hit me a little differently. Some of that comes from the band's story, and some of it comes from carrying around my own losses.
The guest appearances don't hurt, either. Troy Sanders (Mastodon), Matt Pike (High On Fire/Sleep), Eryka Fir (Coma Hole), and Blake Carrera (Aiwass) all contribute throughout the album, but the moment that stayed with me most came from Eryka Fir on "Chrysalis." Her vocals cut through the crushing riffs like a beacon in a storm. When everything else feels impossibly heavy, that haunting voice provides just enough light to pull you through.
Production-wise, this isn't a glossy modern Metal record, and thankfully so. It has that wonderfully organic mid-'90s feel that immediately reminded me of classic My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost. It's raw enough to preserve the emotion without sacrificing clarity, and it suits these songs perfectly.
One surprise I genuinely enjoyed was the band's cover of "Fever Dog" by the fictional band Stillwater. It injects a little breathing room into an otherwise emotionally draining record without feeling out of place. If anything, it offers a glimpse that there's still hope buried beneath all the darkness.
If your tastes lean toward Mastodon, Pallbearer, or the more atmospheric side of Paradise Lost, “Beneath The Weight Of The Worlds” deserves your attention. Some records are heavy because of the riffs. This one is heavy because every note feels like somebody lived it.
Standouts – “Empty Pages”, “Chrysalis” “Stay Dead” and “Fever Dog”.