Doom Trip: Portishead Singer, Doom Trio Cover Black Sabbath Classic

The recording industry seems at a loss when it comes to internet-era business. So it’s no surprise that recent history’s best idea for sales of physical product came from retailers: Record Store Day. In the last few years, more labels and bands are creating exclusive content for the shoppers’ holiday, and the whole enterprise is gaining steam. Sure, the day’s yield amounts to a drop in the bucket, but it helps make it possible for there to be a bucket.

One such exclusive release — and one of the coolest of many neat ideas — is UK doom trio Gonga’s pairing with the formidable singer of Portishead, Beth Gibbons, for a cover of Black Sabbath’s “Black Sabbath” (from their debut, Black Sabbath). For this if nothing else, we can celebrate Record Store Day in earnest: Set against her native monochrome trip hop, Gibbons is free to go overwrought, but atop Gonga’s crush of glacial sludge, she evokes a witch frozen to the waist in black ice and weak. Crank the shit up!