The drowsiest and earliest inklings of the slowcore movement can be traced to Codeine’s 1991 debut. Combining the Louisville scene’s relaxed tempo with doom metal’s distorted slurry, the album is a depressing masterpiece of hushed vocals, noisy guitar, and punishing drums. Remastered from the original analog tapes and recreated in painstaking detail, Frigid Stars LP is the NYC trio’s fuzziest and most affecting work.

“A deft musical approximation of the sound of water turning to ice, the guitars are so weighed down with distortion that they struggle to march from one chord to the next.”—Pitchfork