Death and Groove Metal Worth Hearing: Dotted Eyes, the Debut Single From Tulsa Five-Piece Sluggish
Death and Groove Metal Worth Hearing: Dotted Eyes, the Debut Single From Tulsa Five-Piece Sluggish
A 4:41 Death and Groove Debut with Brutal Vocals and Bluesy Lead Guitar
Sluggish released Dotted Eyes on 28 September 2026, the debut single from a Tulsa death and groove metal five-piece. It suits metal fans who want heavy, grooving riffs and brutal vocals, and the lead guitar leans towards the blues. The band wrote, recorded and published it themselves, and at 4:41 the song takes its time.
Sluggish’s debut single is in the playlist below, and the band’s coverage is collected on Sluggish’s artist profile. Dotted Eyes reached this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Play it loud, then keep reading.
The story behind the band runs back further than the debut. Royce Michael Buckmaster, credited as the composer, plays guitar in Sluggish. In fact, he was already on stage in Tulsa by 2010 with an earlier band, Submerged In Dirt. A live clip of that group playing an old song, Diskinexus, still sits on the YouTube channel Sluggish now uses.
That channel tracks the build-up in public. Uploads from 2021 show home sessions on an electronic drum kit, recorded in Logic Pro X. Then short clips followed from May 2026. Some show baritone riffs in dropped A tuning, others train-like chugs or a melodic guitar solo for a new song.
By the time Dotted Eyes arrived, the project had become a full band. Sluggish now describes itself as a five-piece Oklahoma death and groove metal act. The debut is the first proof of what that line-up sounds like. On Instagram the bio keeps it to three words, Oklahoma Death/Groove. Beside it sits a Ko-fi page where fans can support the band directly.
Dotted Eyes Shows How Sluggish Mix Groove Metal Weight With a Blues Guitar Streak
The heaviness starts with the guitar. The hook riff is played on a baritone, a longer-scaled guitar built for low tunings. That gives the groove real weight before the lead guitar turns towards blues rock.
Groove metal has a famous home not far away. Pantera, formed in Arlington, Texas, in 1981, are credited with developing and popularising the style. Their 1990 album Cowboys from Hell is often seen as the record that codified it. Sluggish come from the same broad part of the map. They work from the same idea, too: the riff has to swing as well as hit.
The words, meanwhile, are dark. The lyric video, posted on 9 October, shows a world seen through blackened eyes. Its narrator is tired of doing it all and sifts forty years of lies for the one that is true. The past arrives as a reckoning that comes too late to understand. The title comes from the chorus, where the dots in a person’s eyes give their lies away. The closing lines name a perfect disease whose fires burn brightest when you try to fight it.
The band have also shown the work in detail. A week before release, Buckmaster posted a lesson on that hook riff, naming the Harley Benton baritone he plays it on. Later, on 4 October, he added a full guitar playthrough. For a debut, that openness is unusual, and it gives guitarists a way in.
What Comes Next for Sluggish, From a ZZ Top Cover With Formaldehyde to a Demo for the Next Song
The next step is already out. On 23 October, Sluggish put out TV Dinners on Bandcamp, a ZZ Top cover recorded with the band Formaldehyde. Greg Duke takes the vocals, and the release also carries a radio edit of Dotted Eyes. On Facebook, where Sluggish count more than 700 followers, the cover leads the page’s featured posts.
The choice of cover says a lot. ZZ Top, formed in Houston, Texas, in 1969, built their sound on Billy Gibbons’ blues guitar. TV Dinners comes from their 1983 album Eliminator, a tongue-in-cheek song about ready meals. It is a natural fit for a heavy band whose lead guitar already leans towards the blues.
The five-piece is already working on more original music. Five days before the debut, Sluggish shared a clip of themselves jamming through the demo of their next song.
From the MusicDrops.News Curator Team: “What we like is how open Sluggish are about the work. A guitar playthrough, a hook lesson and a demo of the next song, all within weeks of the debut.”
Start with Dotted Eyes, then watch the guitar playthrough to hear the bluesy lead parts up close.
Follow Sluggish on Spotify, Instagram, Facebook, the YouTube channel and Apple Music. Stream the single as a release on Spotify, or hear the radio edit on Bandcamp.
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