heavy-metal-darkness: St. Unholyness |Through High Holy Haze |Self-Release

Monday, February 16, 2026

St. Unholyness |Through High Holy Haze |Self-Release

Release Date December 25^th, 2025
Format Digital
Genre Stoner/Doom Metal
Country Germany

St. Unholyness is a stoner-doom duo hailing from southern Germany who dropped their debut album, "Through High Holy Haze", on Christmas Day, 2025. They define their noise as chromed stoner doom, leaning heavily on the buzzsaw HM-2 guitar tone usually reserved for Swedish death metal. The material was written over a span of eight years, from 2017 to 2025, blending slow riffs with faster, blackened outbursts. Christina Earlymorn handled the recording, production, and mixing at her own place, taking on guitar and vocal duties, while Mac Carrigan handles the bass. Themes on the album range from religious control and social pressure to tributes to fallen metal heroes. Currently, they are a two-piece looking for a drummer to flesh out their live sound.

The idea of taking that nasty, chainsaw HM-2 guitar tone, the holy grail of Swedish death metal, and slowing it down for stoner doom sounds killer on paper. In execution, however, "Through High Holy Haze" struggles to keep its head above water. The guitar tone is so dominant and fuzzy that it buries the nuances of the riffs. Instead of a thick wall of sound, you get a wall of static that hides the groove the band claims to have. It makes the listening experience fatiguing halfway through, as the frequencies just mash together into a gray noise.

Songwriting-wise, the album is disjointed for something brewed over eight years. The band tries to stitch together blues rock, psychedelic wandering, and sudden bursts of black metal, but the transitions are often clumsy. "Alchemist Blues" is the biggest offender, dragging on for nearly ten minutes without enough distinct riff changes to justify the length. It wanders around aimlessly when it needs to march.

Lyrically, St. Unholyness has plenty to say, tackling heavy stuff like religious hypocrisy and anti-trans politics in "Hate Response". The passion is there, and the anger is real, but the vocal delivery often gets lost in the mix. The tribute to the Abbott brothers, "Black Tooth Brothers", is a nice sentiment for any metalhead, yet musically it lacks the stomp and swagger that Dimebag and Vinnie were famous for. It sounds thin where it needs to be thick.

Christina Earlymorn took on a massive task by producing this herself, and sadly, the cracks show. The drums (presumably programmed or just buried) have zero punch, sounding like cardboard boxes tapping in the background against that overwhelming guitar fuzz. The rhythm section needs to drive a doom band, and here it feels like an afterthought.

"Through High Holy Haze" is a brave experiment that doesn't quite work. It is a bumpy ride that needs a lot more quality control in the studio and a real drummer to inject some life into these jams. There are sparks of potential here, but they are currently suffocated by the production choices and unfocused songwriting.

Score: 4.5