Hipoxia - Hipoxia (2012)

   As it was mentioned before, from the late '00s there was a tendency in the main scene, that focused on the qualities and effectiveness of noisy sound. The most evident aspect of this was the appearence of drone metal. The rise of the subgenre was kind of short lived because it didn't need much more effort than experimenting with distortion pedals in a rehearsal room, but it's influence was wider, especially at sludge, doom and stoner related bands. Hipoxia was one of those bands who got inspired by that tendency, and discovered the opportunity of drone sound involed into sludge/doom. 

   Probably Conan became the most known band who prefers this style combination, and even though Hipoxia's music lacked the more chilling or levitating stoner rock themes (it's kinda subjective how chilling those themes are with this sound), Conan might be a good example to compare them to. The analogy lies in simplicity, in those basic themes that are slow, effective and extremely heavy the same time. Hipoxia successfully mastered this style and with the assistence of drone sound they increased the down pulling, demoralizing feeling of sludge. Even though sludge was never known as a "happy genre" it was possible to turn things even worse step by step. First by combining it with doom metal, and after by giving a darker tone by merging into the further possibilities of even noisier sound. This latest stage was pretty actual and had style renewing role in the early '10s and Hipoxia counts as one of the earliest forerunners of this direction. Their debut counts as one of the first style determining albums of something newly developed in the depths of underground metal.