The first thing you hear on “Bludgeoning Simulations” isn’t a riff but a single, dramatic piano stab — a small signal that the London-based doom/sludge outfit aren’t interested in repeating the familiar patterns of their past records. But it’s just the beginning.
Our new feature below carries the band’s internal map of influences — albums that directly fed into their mindset while building “Bludgeoning Simulations.” Each member contributed a selection spanning black metal, avant-rock, noise, modern film score, and the kind of sludge releases that stay lodged in memory. Check out the full list below, but first, be sure to give this beast a good listen.
The album landed on November 14th 2025 through Human Worth, available on vinyl and digital formats, and captures the group after a long stretch of fragmented years, personal disruption, and a collective craving to realign.
It’s a record shaped in a remote Welsh studio, tracked with Wayne Adams, whose earlier work with the band on the “Galactic Hiss” EP still carries weight for them.
Ghold treated the sessions like a reset: away from London, away from their usual headspace, trying to push deeper into the anxiety, solitude, and disjointedness that had accumulated since “Input > Chaos.” Adams brought them to Giant Wafer Studio in Powys, surrounded by open valleys and long passages of quiet.
That sense of dislocation is imprinted here; the band describe the album as both a culmination and a tribute to everything they’ve done together so far.
They built these six tracks using prepared field recordings and ambient synth loops as the foundation, then added their heaviest rhythmic work and a rough chorus of unified vocals on top. Slide guitar, pedal effects, and even flute surfaces at the edges.
“Bludgeoning Simulations” moves between forms: the lumbering menace of opening track “Cauterise,” the linear slow-burn of “Lowest” and its final spoken command to “Burn it down,” the long drone-and-whisper architecture of “Place To Bless A Shadow,” and the brief pivot into riff-swing on “Fallen Debris.” “Leaves” slides back into a more formless crawl, and “Rude, Awaken” ends everything with the record’s most industrial, blunt-force passage. The band’s own framing suits the material: “we see this record as a culmination and a sort of tribute to all our previous work and experiences together as a band.”
Their own history runs wide — years across UK and European circuits, tours with Arabrot, Oozing Wound, Palehorse and Bongripper, festival slots at Desertfest, Damnation, Raw Power, Supernormal, Supersonic, and the 2015 Temples Fest — but the new material sits apart from milestone-chasing. Proceeds from the Bandcamp edition will benefit SkatePal, echoing Human Worth’s ongoing model of releasing heavy music tied to direct charitable support.
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A few outside voices weigh in on the band’s sonic angle in simple, telling lines. Metal Hammer wrote, “Titanic basslines rumble ominously and adroit rhythms that crush and swing continue to form Ghold’s foundations.” The Skinny concluded, “Ghold will blow minds even while beating them into oblivion.” Echoes and Dust called it “bleak as hell. Not to mention heavy. Like wrecking-ball heavy.” Everything Is Noise described the group’s approach as “a mind-bogglingly terrific and wholly innocuous ode to what sludge music is about.”
The record also carries the band’s internal map of influences — not decorative name-drops, but albums that directly fed into their mindset while building “Bludgeoning Simulations.” Each member contributed a selection, and the range is wide: black metal, avant-rock, noise, modern film score, and the kind of sludge records that leave an imprint long after first exposure. Their words below sketch out the texture, intent, and emotional residue behind each choice.
Here is the full list, in their own voice:
DISPIRIT – Enantiodromian Birth
[2018 – Self-Released]
Creaking US black metal of the most cryptic and smoke-shrouded sort. High level technical proficiency delivered in a completely raw and obscure way. John Gossard’s (ex-Weakling) involvement alone should convince any unbelievers of their folly. – Paul Antony (drums, vocals, synth and piano)
SUMAC – What One Becomes
[2016 – Thrill Jockey]
This album is very dear to me. I listened to What One Becomes on my way to work in its entirety every morning for about 6 months. The album is exactly 59 minutes in duration, which, synchronistically enough, is the same as my commute from door to door.
I was reading Mountains of the Mind by Robert MacFarlane during this time. The music is now irretrievably bound to my recollection of MacFarlane’s account of humankind’s fascination with the beauty and terror of Alpinism as well as his masterful description of Tenzing and Hillary’s dizzying attempt at the summit of Everest.
Aaron Turner is my favourite guitarist. His playing pushes far beyond virtuosity. He is a conduit for a higher power. No, in fact, he is a generator, a vast throbbing sub-station compressed into the shape of a man, projecting shards of incendiary light into our hearts and minds. Forgive the hyperbole, but this record is everything to me. A glorious and brutal synergy of three titans of musicianship; bass, drums and guitar being wielded as Claymore, Zweihänder, and Morning Star.
The album does not simply bludgeon, there is gut-wrenching subtlety and nuance. Shimmering passages of guitar playing that feel like blinking into the morning sun, still drunk from the night before, eyes rimmed with tears, cortisol and adrenaline mixing with booze and nicotine to produce a numbing high.
Sumac tapped into something vital on this record. It will never leave me. – Alex Virji (bass and vocals)
CASPAR BRöTZMANN MASSAKER – Home
[1995 – Blast First]
A band favourite. Blown out avant-rock of the highest order. On the edge with a beautiful looseness. Riffs but noise. A freewheeling, cyclical and timeless breaking apart of whatever “rock music” is supposed to represent. – Paul
SWANS – The Great Annihilator
[1995 – Young God]
The lockdown. Ghold were musing back and forth “online”; the new concept of collaboration, ideas new and old, on what would become Bludgeoning Simulations. I found myself revisiting albums and listening to ones I missed – one such record by Swans, that amongst the “old” Swans (Filth, Cop) and the “new” Swans (The Seer, The Glowing Man) was Great Annihilator. I had given far less time to this album than others but like some records, struck me hard at this point in time.
I didn’t quite pin it as Swans when I first heard it, with sections akin to Angels Of Light – Gira’s band that was set up a year prior to Great Annihilator’s release – both weren’t “heavy” enough for me previously, whatever that meant to a younger self. What I heard in 2020 from Great Annihilator was forcible change via exploratory musicianship and collaboration. The repetition Swans are known for, with smaller songs and phrasings amongst it all, like gestural movements and stories around a fire in the woods. Jarboe’s vocal on ‘Mother / Father’ truly tears hard desperation, listen to me, hear me, help me, screams in the night.
These feeling I had about The Great Annihilator were my hope and values for Bludgeoning Simulations – we were all apart, I had moved back to Yorkshire away from the band in London, I wasn’t going back – but a record that was a story of the band’s journey, its potential end, not just a collection of songs was an intention. – Al Wilson (guitar, bass, lapsteel, vocals and piano)
PRURIENT – Frozen Niagara Falls
[2015 – Profound Lore]
Terrifying and compassionate simultaneously. Layers of abstraction raise new questions on every listen. I always go back to this album in Dominick Fernow’s extensive catalogue. Gives me strange feelings I can’t describe. – Paul
JóHANN JóHANNSSON – MANDY (ORIGINAL FILM SCORE)
[2018 – Lakeshore / Invada]
The Soundtrack to the film Mandy – directed by Panos Cosmatos and scored by Jóhann Jóhannsson – continues to be a source of inspiration for me. The sonic palette of the soundtrack takes a serpentine meander through a myriad of emotive states as one is treated to tracts of heart wrenching melody during ‘Mandy Love Theme’, only then to be hurled headlong into the bottomless perdition and pulverising tonal doom of ‘Burning Church’ featuring Stephen O’Malley from Sunn O))).
A residue of the vicious, bilious and wanton anger that Nicholas Cage’s character harbours during the latter stages of the film can be detected at certain points on Bludgeoning Simulations, as can Cage’s abject helplessness and alcohol induced mania. The violence and suffering of both Mandy and Bludgeoning Simulations takes place against a backdrop of cosmic miasma. Horror and sublimity mingle and coagulate, thus producing a beautifully obscene run-off.
Ghold rewatched the film whilst recording in Wales, and whilst suitably inebriated I think that experience created a particular lens through which I now view the making of the record. – Alex
SEXTODECIMO – Sextodecimo
[2014 – Self-Released]
Nasty, disgustingly heavy tar filled sludge metal delivered with perfect execution and an unbelievably rotten production. Proper filth. No fucking about from this legendary Oxford band. They’re back after a long hiatus. Look them up and go to a show. Buy this album. – Paul
HARVEY MILK – Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men
[1996 – Reproductive]
One of the most important records to me before myself and Paul started making music, and it continues to be influential. If you don’t know it then you’ll quickly see how much it has influenced us all. – Alex
