Adelaide Doom and Sludge Metal merchants Sundowner are back, and things haven’t gotten any prettier.
Three years after “Lysergic Ritual“ dragged listeners through a feedback-soaked wasteland of nihilism and decay, the Australian quartet have announced their third full-length, “Cesspool,” due out October 15 via Melbourne’s Disdain Records.
The band are offering the first taste of the album with “Intoxication Blues”, a filthy, swaggering slab of NOLA-inspired sludge accompanied by a brand-new visualizer.
Built around poisoned blues riffs, suffocating grooves, walls of feedback and a thick layer of distortion, “Intoxication Blues” provides an appropriately nasty introduction to an album designed to soundtrack a world going up in flames.
Watch official visualizer for “Intoxication Blues” via the YouTube player below:
“Cesspool” sees Sundowner take the caustic, slow-burning Sludge that has defined them since their 2021 debut “Guns, Knives and Tyre Irons” and push it into even more punishing territory across ten new tracks.
The band explain: ‘”Cesspool’ continues on with our brand of sludge, further melding influences from the classic ’90s pioneers of the genre through our own lens out of Adelaide, South Australia.”
For Sundowner, that lineage has always been clear. The poisoned Blues of Eyehategod, the ugliness of Iron Monkey and Buzzov-en, and the smoke-filled grooves of Weedeater remain embedded in their DNA. But “Cesspool” isn’t interested in simply recreating the past. Instead, those influences are fed through Sundowner’s own distinctly Australian strain of hostility.
The album also sees Sundowner reunite with the production team behind Lysergic Ritual. After handling virtually everything themselves during the band’s early years, Sundowner brought Jason Fuller of Goatsound Studios into the fold to mix their second album, with Dav Byrne of Iridium Audio handling mastering.
“We went with the same production team as our last album, but pushed everything further for a more punishing and abrasive sound.” Says the band.
Across its ten tracks, “Cesspool” doubles down on everything Sundowner do best: filthy Blues, crushing grooves, abrasive riffs and pure sludge-soaked hostility. It’s heavier, nastier and more punishing, without straying from the band’s uncompromising roots.
“Cesspool” will be released October 15, 2026 via Disdain Records, pre-orders for the vinyl release are now available at this location. Digital copies are available here.
Tracklist:
01. The Deep
02. Golden Skinned Gods
03. Grave Wax
04. Intoxication Blues
05. Bleach Sniffer
06. 7 Shades Of Shit
07. Complete And Utter Ruin
08. Unwilling Subjects
09. Water Torture
10. Pond Scum