Holy shit. Doom fiends rejoice, for NWN! and BBT&D have unearthed *another* disc of rarities from the most Sabbathy of NWOBHM bands, the illustrious, infamous doom metal pioneers Witchfinder General. Like the live cd that came out last year this one is again material from the archives of original guitarist Phil Cope, who provides liner notes in the cd booklet (which is also filled with vintage photos and graphics) discussing the music herein, which consists of tracks from Witchfinder General's 1981 debut 7" single ("Burning A Sinner" b/w "Satan's Children") and their 1982 12" single Soviet Invasion (three songs: "Soviet Invasion", "Rabies", and a live one, "R.I.P."), along with four further live tracks recorded at a pub in Birmingham circa '81. The songs from the 7" and 12" are all raw, riffy, heavier-than-thou tunes bearing all the hallmarks of the material we know and love from the General's subsequent classic albums Death Penalty and Friends Of Hell. "Burning A Sinner" (which Cope mentions was often referred to as "Burning A Singer") was later re-recorded for their first full-length Death Penalty, but the other songs remained available only on those original two hard-to-find single releases -- until now. Reason enough for most Witchfinder General fans to want this! In addition, the rather rough-sounding live stuff here is a headbanging hoot, singer Zeeb Parkes charmingly and so obviously a (drunken) pupil of Ozzy's in the stage banter dep't. and vocal style too... and also they do a totally unreleased composition, "Phantasmagorical", never heard elsewhere. So definitely a bit of history there, and all the more reason that this collection of early tracks is essential for all true fans of the band and old school doom metal in general! In fact, considering that currently we can only seem to sporadically get copies of the reissue of Friends Of Hell, but never Death Penalty, this is all the more welcome of a release, being a good place as any to start for anyone keen on hearing what this cult doom band was all about.
Oh yeah! We've been eagerly awaiting this ever since we heard Buried By Time And Dust was putting it out. A deluxe box set containing 180g vinyl reissues of this cult NWOBHM band's original two full-length albums, 1982's Death Penalty (featuring classics like "Free Country" and "No Stayer") and 1983's Friends Of Hell (equally cool, with such songs as "Love On Smack" and the under-rated "Music"). Part Sabbathy doom, part psychedelic punk, and part party metal. Initially best known for their risque album covers, featuring topless witches/wenches in tableaus that combined "historical reenactment" with Page Three Girl cheesecake, WfG's lasting legacy has more to do with their Sabbathy sound, they being one of the first (and few) bands in the '80s to so overtly worship Ozzy, Tony and Co., and establish the "doom metal" genre, along with Saint Vitus, Trouble, Pentagram, and Candlemass.
With this collector's set, you get not just the two lps, and nice box to keep 'em in, but also a huge 20 page booklet featuring unpublished outtakes from those infamous album cover photo sessions, plus full lyrics, liner notes from guitarist Phil Cope, newspaper clippings, and more previously unseen photos (live and promo shots), making this quite a treat for all true WfG fans.
Here's what AQ's Jim Haynes (not our usual metal reviewer!) had to say about these two albums when we first listed compact disc reissues some years ago...
Death Penalty is one of the lost metal albums from the early '80s, falling victim to its own indecisiveness, not that such is a bad thing. Never really staying "true" either to the glam metal of Hanoi Rocks, Fastway, and Motley Crue or to the shocking horror shows of Ozzy and Iron Maiden, Witchfinder General alternated between both worlds, with the first half of Death Penalty being rowdy party numbers about drinking beer and dropping acid. These songs followed standard blues based rock, but as Witchfinder General was pretty amped up on the aforementioned substances, they were quite a bit more distorted and quick tempoed. By the time Witchfinder General gets to their anthemic "Witchfinder General," this album takes an impressive turn down the dark path of mythologically laden proto-doom metal, loaded with super-heavy (for 1982) Sabbathy grooves and aggro lyrics mostly about killing witches. They also throw in some grave robbing, just to prove how evil they are. A confused classic... Witchfinder General's second album Friends Of Hell picks up right where Death Penalty left off, with an album split evenly between the party rock elements from the New Wave of British Metal back in 1983 and their undeniable influence from Sabbath. Just as bipolar (between comical and evil) as the first album, and just as great. One of Jim's (!) favorite metal bands, and that goes for most of the rest of us here at AQ too.
Not that probably if you're in the market for this, you need US to tell you that Witchfinder General is great. Though, we were shocked, shocked, to find out not long ago that one of our good friends and customers, who shall remain unnamed, had not only never heard any Witchfinder General but had never heard OF them, despite being a huge fan of Sabbath specifically and stoner, doom, black and other metal music in general! We were like WTF? How can you not know WfG??! What are you, -not- high?
This one is for fans only. You know you're a fan if you saw the words Witchfinder General above and your heart sort of skipped a beat at the thought of a Witchfinder General record you didn't know about. Witchfinder General were pretty much the only NWOBHM band to base their entire sound on Black Sabbath, thus making them pioneers prior to pretty much all doom to follow: Candlemass, Cathedral, through to Witchcraft today. This disc, recorded live in 1983, is an awesome testament to just how kick ass the 'General were. The recording quality however is not. Thus, the for-fans-only disclaimer. The band sounded great, and the songs of course are totally killer, but as with most live records recorded from the sound board, the vocals dominate, the guitars are not as loud as they should be, and the drums sometimes get lost, but like the recent Bedemon release reviewed elsewhere this list it sort of just adds to the underground vibe (though Bedemon is recorded better than this, for sure). And who gives a shit about sound quality, this is mother fucking Witchfinder General!! Live!!! In 1983!!! It sounds a little bit like actually being at the show, but maybe hearing them from the dirty bathroom beside the stage. The way all real metal was meant to be heard! Regardless, this is an amazing (re)discovery, and along with the Bedemon disc we have been in blown out lo-fi stoner fuzz doom heaven!
ULTRA LIMITED! We only have about 20 copies and this is supposedly already out of print, so act fast!
Rejoice O Doomlords! From the venerable Rise Above comes this heaving slab of UK true doom, the debut from Witchsorrow, an immediately classic sounding hunk of lumbering heaviness, of downtuned mournful melodies, of plodding rhythmic thud, totally raw stripped down monolithic doooooooooom.
Channeling the spirit of Cathedral, Candlemass, Saint Vitus and other doom purveyors, into a sound that falls quite close to that of their sonic brethren (and sistren) in Electric Wizard, Witchsorrow don't go so much for groove or Sabbathy swing, as they do for churning crush. Occasionally, like on the 6 minute "Hail To Guy Fawkes", they crank up the tempo, and unleash something that sounds more like Trouble or Acid, a sort of doom-ed speed metal, but even then it's peppered with bits of slow motion dirgery. And there are moments where the distortion gets dialed back a bit, leaving a bit of mopey meander, but it never lasts, an avalanche of crumbling distorted doom-ed riffage is never far away.
No reinventing the wheel, nothing super fucked up and far our, Witchsorrow traffic in TRUE doom, for true doomlords, who just need it to be slow and heavy and epic and majestic, all of which this most certainly is.
Of the many wonderful Wizards in the world, Electric Wizard, Glitter Wizard, The Lizard Wizard (pals with King Gizzard), etc., we've always been especially partial to The Wizar'd, they of the oddly-placed apostrophe in the name. This eccentric outfit from the antipodal island of Tasmania plays old school doom metal, sorta coming across like an idiosyncratic DIY blend of Black Sabbath (natch) and US epic metal legends Manilla Road, who are another obvious big influence. We've always dug everything from The Wizar'd, and have to say that with Ancient Tome Of Arcane Knowledge they're catchier than ever. If you liked their last album, Pathways Into Darkness, which we raved about, you'll bow down to this too. And those of you yet to experience The Wizar'd, but who, say, like Uncle Acid and Satan's Satyrs and Salem's Pot, give this a shot... 'Tis plodding gothic doom rockin', with majestic riffery, some sweet lead guitar, and, the make-or-break factor for most folks we figure, flamboyant 'clean' vocals so extremely gnarled and nasal you might imagine the singer as just a big nose - it's freaky and weird and works for us, though some might think otherwise. Definitely part of the Manilla Road comparison. All in all, amazingly hummable considering how 'wretched' The Wizar'd general vibe is. Heck, portions of "Far Away Castles", for instance, are almost psychedelically blissful.
This actually came out on vinyl over a year ago, sorry we never listed it, but finally we have the cd version, and it's got EIGHT bonus tracks anyway, all from a live show on Friday September the 13th, 2013, including songs from this album and Pathways both, along with a couple older Wizar'd faves.
**SPECIAL MINI-INTERVIEW ADDENDUM**
Since we got these (along with the awesome Outcast ep also reviewed this week) directly from the cool underground heavy metal label run by Wizar'd frontman Ol' Rusty Vintage Wizard Master, he was nice enough to do a little Q&A for us, we asked about a few things we'd been wondering, like...
AQ: So, what's the deal with the apostrophe??!
Ol' Rusty: The apostrophe is there to differentiate between stage wizards and those who possess true magickal abilities.
AQ: How would you describe the "progression" of the band over the years?
Ol' Rusty: The sound has ventured in a more dark heavy metal direction, which I believe is the true essence of doom metal. Doom metal is heavy metal. Life is death.
AQ: Can you say something about the 'scene' in Tasmania? What's it like being in a band there?
Ol' Rusty: Tasmania has limited opportunities to play live in a satisfactory manner, there is only really one venue in Hobart where we play. Most of the other bands in Hobart play in styles that do not interest me, modern stuff, boring technical death metal, etc.
AQ: Speaking of the metal scene in Tasmania, we've gotta ask, you ever encounter Striborg??
Ol' Rusty: I've seen Striborg play twice at two events put on by MONA (look that up if you haven't heard of it, pretty interesting stuff) and both times it was absolutely horrible, the guy was sitting on a wooden chair playing guitar to pre-recorded drum and vocal tracks...
AQ: We know you've got some other projects, like Tarot ('70 Uriah Heep-ish heavy prog) and Dracula (Mercyful Fate-ish black metal), if you wanna say anything about them...
Ol' Rusty: Dracula will begin spreading darkness over the mainland of Australia in 2015, while Tarot is working on their first full length album.
AQ: And what's next for The Wizar'd?
Ol' Rusty: The Wizar'd are working on new material, most likely an EP that will be released through Heavy Chains Records.
AQ: We really like the trippy artwork on Ancient Tome Of Arcane Knowledge, apparently it's by your brother Barney, can you say something about him?
Ol' Rusty: His art is truly incredible, in my opinion he is one of the most interesting and unique artists doing album covers today. He has also designed some tattoos. I strongly recommend people check out his stuff at www.waning-gibbous.com
AQ: Who is Frankie and what's up with his dungeon? [The song "Frankie's Dungeon" is one of our faves from The Wizar'd's previous album Pathways Into Darkness, and also appears on the live portion of the new cd.]
Ol' Rusty: Frankie's Dungeon is the place we must all go...
AQ: Ozzy or Dio?
Ol' Rusty: Hard to say, of course I'm a huge fan of the Ozzy Sabbath albums, and his early solo stuff, but I think overall Dio had a more consistent output, from Rainbow to Sabbath to his own band, it was all killer, and he never gave in, and never became a parody of him self. All hail RJD!
AQ: Saint Vitus or Candlemass?
Ol' Rusty: Another tough one, I think both bands have stellar albums, and boring ones. Saint Vitus for me is Scott Reagers, those albums especially Die Healing are some of my favorites of all time. With that said the first two Candlemass cannot be touched.
AQ: Favorite Manilla Road album?
Ol' Rusty: Crystal Logic!!
It's hard not to love the Wizar'd. C'mon, "Wizar'd"??? Exactly. What the fuck? Is it a verb, like "you'll get Wizar'd?" Or is it just some ancient spelling of Wizard, taken from some old dusty book of spells. Is Wizar'd darker and more evil and mysterious than the tired old traditional Wizard? Either way, the Wizar'd traffic in classic epic old school doom. Or according to the cd booklet "Crushing Gothic Slime". Massive plodding true doom from down under. The Aussies explore their inner Sabbath, each track rife with plodding tempos, mournful minor key melodies, slow motion downtuned riffs, soaring clean vocals, folky acoustic breakdowns, stonery grooves, psychdoom guitar leads, even some soaring King Diamond-ish wails, tons of reverb and loads of haunting dark ambience, think Witchfinder General, Candlemass, Reverend Bizarre, Trouble and of course Black Sabbath. The first time we listened to this, it sounded a bit too doom derivative, and the vocals were really strange, almost TOO strange, but the more we listen to this, the more we find ourselves returning again and again and again, and now those weird vocals, sort of Ozzy meets the chantlike drone of Om are quite possibly our favorite part. Recommended for the demented and doomed!
Can we write a Wizar'd review without mentioning the weird unexplained apostrophe in their name? No we can't!
With that behind us, here's what we think about the latest lethargic lamentation let loose by these lords of lo-fi doom metal, down n' out and drowned in sorrow Down Under. Their new album, Infernal Wizardry (hey, shouldn't that be Infernal Wizar'dry??) features eight new, agonized outpourings of distorted dirge. Eight Sabby slabs of fuzz filled sludge, with spacey psychedelic lead guitar, trudging beats, and misery-evoking vox that vary from an Ozzyish warble to a deep slowed-down mumble to a more punkish shout. Fans of Saint Vitus, Reverend Bizarre, Electric Wizard and of course Black Sabbath are of course the sort of folks likely to become ensorcelled by the oozing audio of this Wizar'd. At least, those that can appreciate true, traditional doom at its most raw and primitive.
As serious and sincere as their music sounds (tracks like "Witchwither" and "Depressive Holiday" are truly moving, morose monuments), the Wizar'd obviously have a (drunken?) sense of humor too, judging by their slightly silly pseudonyms: Ol' Rusty Vintage Wizard Master is the vocalist and lead guitarist, Blackie the Crimson Heretic Of A Thousand Eyes plays bass, Iron Tyrant is on the drums, and Sir Nunn Piss handles the other guitar parts. Heck you've gotta have *some* fun, when you otherwise seem as negative and dejected as these suffering dudes do!
They pick up the pace a bit on the aggressive "Crushing Gothic Slime" (which, as we now realize, is NOT how they label their music, but rather an expression of animosity toward Goths) but mostly this is glacial and gloomy... culminating in the nearly 13 minute epic "The Megalomaniac". What we really like about these guys (besides the apostrophe) is how their poverty-stricken sound works towards the dual goals of doominess and drugginess. What Wizar'd lack in production, they make up for in feeling. It's old school doom done with the same fucked up aesthetic of our favorite bizarre, far underground black metal. Utterly, wretchedly recommend'd.
Our favorite apostrophe'd doomsters from Down Under return! We've had a heck of a time tracking down the compact disc version of this, haven't been able to get it in yet (their supposed US distro won't email us back, helloooooo?), but thankfully Buried By Time And Dust just put the album out on deluxe vinyl, we got it from them along with Solstice's New Dark Age reish we reviewed last list. Usually BBTAD do reissues of classic doom (Witchfinder General, Pagan Altar, etc.) but they decided to get ahead of the curve here and release what simply sounds like something they'd eventually be reissuing anyway, if they're still doing this in 20-30 years.
With Pathways To Darkness, their second full-length, Tasmania's most Sabbathy DIY doommongers offer up a crude, yet catchy album that posers will doubtless despise. Normal folks will find the vocals too weird and nasal, the riffs too raw and remedial. But those that don't mind their doom a little damaged and psychedelic, ought to dig this wretched and rockin', emotional and eccentric, seven song opus. Less murky than some past recordings, this is, in fact, perhaps The Wizar'd at their poppiest. Seriously, slumberously.
There's lots for the True (and Truly Demented) Doom fan to love here... The slo-mo pop of "Living Dead". The melancholic triumph of "Rainbow's End". The almost gothic epic "Frankie's Dungeon". The tearful trudge of "Some Like It Dead". The spooky, droning Hammer Horror keyboards that herald "Disease From The East"... You gotta delve in, and revel in the sheer doominess of it all, that in its own outsider, down under way, retardedly rivals Electric Wizard, Reverend Bizarre, and Saint Vitus. Folks who enjoyed the recent, ridiculous, Sabbath-centric Furze might also find this to their liking as well.
By the way, there's been a few lineup changes for The Wizar'd since their previous album from 2008, with rhythm guitarist Sir Nun Piss having left the band, causing bassist Blackie The Crimson Heretic Of A Thousand Eyes to move over to guitar, alongside vocalist and lead guitarist Ol' Rusty Vintage Wizard Master, with Iron Tyrant on drums, and new bass recruit Tangerine Dream holding down the low end (of which there's plenty). Yes, those are their stage names, and aren't they great?!
Ultimately, though, even with the obvious sense of humor such names convey, we suspect that any such frivolity on the part of the The Wizar'd is part of a "sad clown" scenario, y'know? This is DOOM to the core, in the truest sense. Feel it, folks.
Being on BBTAD, it's a nicely done 180 gram vinyl slab, packaged with a booklet and a giant obi, AND they've included 3 live bonus tracks not on the cd version: "Crushing Gothic Slime", "Burned Lord", and "Smouldering Sinners"!
The return of our favorite apostrophe challenged true dooooom overlords, Wizar'd! We've yet to figure out why exactly that apostrophe is in there. All we can figure is that the band name is actually a verb, as in "You have been Wizar'd!!!!"
Regardless, these guys rule, fans of classic doom, Sabbath, Pentagram, and the like need to bee into this band. After a brief organ intro, complete with creepy guitar harmonics, the band launch into "Smouldering Sinners" [sic], total classic old school doom, killer riffing, really strange vocals, nasal and whiney, but super distinctive and cool, in much the same way Ozzy's vocals always were. Plus the recording is bizarre as well, making the drums sound a bit like a drum machine. The flipside is their theme song "The Wizar'd" and is more of the same, plodding classic true metal doom, the vocals less whiney, but just as cool.
And if there's any question as to where these guys are coming from, the liner notes offer up the dedication to the "masters of metal: Manilla Road, Pagan Altar and Death SS." Hell yeah! ----* ----* Compilations : ----*
We were so obsessed with the first Woe record, A Spell For The Death Of Man, a black metal record that was strangely melodic, and peppered its blast and buzz with post rock melodies, and referenced Husker Du and Bastro as much as it did black metal. So not only were we thrilled that this one man band got signed to Candlelight, but that there was a new record on the horizon, which was revealed to be this, the enigmatically titled Quietly, Undramatically, which as you might imagine is neither.
Much like the first record, Quietly begins about as unblack metal as one could imagine, keening guitars, pounding tribal drums, definitely way more math or post than black, but the slow building tension was gradually ratcheted up, some guttural vocal bellows, the whole thing so melodic and epic, and then POW, a classic metal break and the record explodes into some of the fastest most furious black buzz we've heard, constantly shifting into something almost punkish, or slipping in little bits of classic metal, but barreling along ferociously, peppering the blasting buzz with some incredible drumming and some twisted gnarled riffage.
The title track is 8 minutes of pure melodic black bliss, exactly what we loved so much about the first record, sure it's heavy and the drums are blasting, but the melodies soar, and the harmonies are gorgeous, reimagined, this could have been some sort of indie pop song, but here it's something totally other, epic and majestic and so heavy, slipping into midtempo breakdowns that are just as melodic as the main body of the song, relentless but so catchy, 8 minutes is way too short.
The rest of the record is also melodic, but not so obviously so, although "A Treatise On Control" definitely comes close, with its soaring melodies, and super intense crescendos, sounding almost emo at times, super passionate and emotional, a noise rock / screamo / black metal hybrid that totally slays, and while still definitely black metal, manages to elevate the usual tropes and create something distinctly unique.
Lest the true black hordes be discouraged, the final two tracks are way more more furious and frenzied, but even at their most frantic, those songs remain infused with Woe's masterful melodic sense, and a pop element that seems to underpin the otherwise grim proceedings, although perhaps it's not so noticeable that it would distract the casual black metaller. But for us, it only further cements the fact that Woe is making some of the coolest, most distinctive and innovative black metal around, and thus this comes totally and unequivocally recommended to anyone who likes their black metal to not necessarily sound like all the other black metal out there.
Originally released as a super limited cassette in 2004, Badb is one of the first releases from Canadian black metal weirdos WOLD, and if you thought the other records were noisy and demented before, this one will blow your mind (and probably your speakers too). After a quick opening intro of whipping winter wind, that ends abruptly as if someone just leaned over and pushed stop on the tape player, the record launches into the title track, the first song in what is apparently a songsuite based on a the myth of a mysterious war goddess, and is an crumbling onslaught of superdistorted buzz and while there may be drums, if there are, they're buried WAY down in the mix, the vocals however are right up front, a wild demonic shriek over the churning roiling blackness below. And so goes the rest of the record, a twisted maelstrom of sound, a sonic blizzard of black buzz and harsh vokills, the guitars less riffy and buzzy as they are practically a Merzbowian wall of blown out white noise, that white noise seeming to be in constant flux, occasionally coalescing into an almost riffy churn, before splintering again into a blast of face melting buzz. The recording is super lo-fi too, which gives even the harshest passages a strange washed out and muted vibe, the coolest parts when the sounds seem to blur into one another and become a strange sort of pulsing alien rhythm.
"Final Offering" might be our favorite, a murky monster of a track, with the most discernible riffing, and a cool murky swirl that envelops everything in its path, and when the vocals back off, the music becomes a weird audial illusion, like those paintings that reveal hidden shapes if you stare at them long enough, the wild tangle of buzz seems to unravel before your ears, the various melodic fragments and interwoven textures shifting and transforming, eventually seemingly melting into a blurry viscous pool of buzz and drone, that eventually fades to black, finishing the record the way it started, with another stretch of frosty winter winds. Awesome. And EXTREMELY noisy, fans of Wold know what to expect, and folks into other noise metal outfits like Nekrosov, Gnaw Their Tongues, Alkerdeel, Hallow and the like will definitely dig, but be warned this is less about THE RIFF and more about blown out blackness...
The newest slab of blackened wyrd doom-folk from the misty moors of... Texas? Poland? Mordor? Well, wherever main-mangler Smolken makes his home these days. Smolken, also the man responsible for the equally dark and fucked up Jandekian "black metal" of Dead Raven Choir, always has had a skewed take on his favorite subgenres of music, in the case of Wolfmangler entering the realm of doom metal riding a swaybacked country-folk steed, but eschewing the cinematically Western wide-open spaces that Earth has been roaming of late, to plow deeper into the muck and mire of the direst of wagonwheel-sucking mudflats... There's 14 doleful and dirgey tracks here, Smolken sawing away on some classical-sounding stringed instrument like an uber-depressed, one-man chamber music outfit. Besides those suicidal strings, this is sparse and skeletal, there's not much more here... some background ambience, clanking percussion, and creepy whispers... all of which work for us in a Dead Raven Choir like fashion. But then Smolken airs some almost-spoken, sorta-theatrical clean vocals (on tracks 12 and 13 fersinstance) and we're not quite as into it. For DRC fans surely, but maybe not doom metallers this time out (unlike Wolfmangler's earlier split with Moss).
Yet another mysterious missive from the dark forests of Poland (via Texas of course) courtesy of doom folk trio Wolfmangler, featuring the one and only Smolken, aka Dead Raven Choir.
While Wolfmangler have been know to lay down some serious doom (c'mon, they shared a split with Moss!!) albeit in their own uniquely skewed fashion, these two tracks are not so much doom as they are doomy, the band embracing their foresty folk side, but shot through with a healthy dose of mourn and misery.
The sound here is some sort of funereal campfire folk, simple plodding percussion, moaning violin, fluttering flute, very tribal, and primitive, almost old timey, like some strange pirate sea shanty. Growled ghostly vocals crawl menacingly over what at times sounds like a very gnarled and twisted version of Peter And The Wolf.
The second side is a bit slower and creepier, even darker and more lugubrious, the flute, instead of flitting and fluttering is stretched into long drawn out melancholy melodies, the vocals a ragged whisper, the strings now weaving a surprisingly lush minor key backdrop.
A nice little slab of creepy crawly doom folk for sure.
Packaged in super swank silkscreened sleeves. he cover image, a wolf and what appears to be a river of blood, and a drowning body. Nice!
It's been nearly a year since we've heard from this mysterious black sonic beast from New Zealand, a shadowy entity that may or may not be a dirgedronedoom shadow cast by the very dark side of one PseudoArcana head honcho Antony Milton.
Black Uhura is four looooooooong tracks of gorgeous viscous murk. The opening track is a dreamy drift, if you dream of being dragged through thick tarpits in the very depths of the underworld. Riffs held over a flame and melted down into shimmering black puddles of sound, rippling gently, beneath, vocals mumble and warble, buried under a crushing slab of slow sinister sprawl, like some unholy collision between SUNNO))) and the Dead C, but with the bass cranked and the treble turned all the way down.
The second track is way more caustic, a blown out riffage rendered in violent squalls and smeared sheets of crumbling buzz and low end rumble. Prickly and chaotic and dirgey, almost more Merzbow noise, than any sort of dirgey drone, but closer listening reveals some buried riffage, some moaning walls of feedback, some corrosive metallic song structure, but sounding as if it were left outside to rust and decay and slowly crash to the ground.
The third track returns to the relative tranquility of the first, with the song elements even more noticeable, a barely there voice, a sing songy melody, some sort of desiccated melody, all washed out and indistinct, beneath the slow flowing river of molten hum and lo fi shimmer. Then the final track crashes back down, but not before slowly building up from a tolling church bell, a stuttering disembodied riff, thickening guitar growl, coruscating peals of feedback and machine like grinding buzz, all slowly sinking into a roiling black abyss, eventually morphing into a super hypnotic processed low end slither, and a surprising drum machine'd smoky coda...
Packaged in a super swank oversized dvd sized booklet, offset printed. The cover black on thick brown cardstock, the inside 8 pages of hellish black and white sketches, liner notes, the cd affixed to the back cover, and a 200mg sticker. Limited of course...
By now, Wolves in the Throne Room have established themselves as one of America's most gifted and awesomely dependable black metal bands, and their third long player, Black Cascade, picks up right where their recent Malevolent Grain ep left off. All the elements of their expansive, blackened psychedelic approach are here: sprawling songs with a methodical attention to song structure, relentless drumming, perfectly interlocking dual guitars, tortured raspy vocals, and an ability to seamlessly merge synthy ambience with a furious but often very melancholy black metal onslaught. There seems to be a legion of haters out there, ready to label the band as a bunch of PC hippies who aren't adhering to whatever rules they assume apply to a style of music that is pretty nihilistic and iconoclastic by nature. But fuck those people. This band is great and truly deserves whatever accolades come its way.
The ever-present density of WITTR's sound is further heightened on Black Cascade, their bio proudly emphasizing the old school analog sound they have achieved through vintage recording gear and classic tube amps. While we don't want to ramble on about various pieces of musical equipment, it should be noted that these devices have certainly helped the band to capture a sound music nerds might refer to as "organic". Sure, we at aQuarius love all the homemade bedroom black metal that sounds as if it was recorded in a blender during a tornado... The sound on Black Cascade, however, is clear and upfront, though hardly refined or polished. It is quite rock n' roll in a classic sense, which works great when the band breaks out some Thin Lizzy-esque guitar harmonies on the first track "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog". Mossy, ultra distorted guitars hang like a thick black cloud (or a sea of fog, if you will) in the atmosphere as the drums create the necessary propulsion that make a Wolves in the Throne Room song sound like it could, and should, carry on FOREVER. Song #2, "Ahrimanic Trance" is, true to its title, a hypnotic, trancelike black metal trip into some long forgotten wilderness. The song gives one a feeling of being transported at high speeds across the landscape while watching from the back of some primitive vehicle, a sense that is carried on in the next track, "Ex Cathedra". The final song, "Crystal Ammunition", starts life as a dizzying, hyperspeed slab of pure black metal before morphing into a beautiful lament that may (or may not) reference the melody from Malevolent Grain's "A Looming Resonance". It's seems like things will culminate in the ultimate fadeout. But, uh, what happens after the fade out? As everything gallops off into the distance, otherworldly guitar chords and tambourine are the only sounds evident. Eventually these too recede as they are overtaken by a phased out synthscape. Fucking awesome.
While this album was great from the moment we first put it on, repeated listens have been revealing more and more. To say this is a huge departure from what Wolves in the Throne Room have accomplished in the past would be inaccurate. It is, instead, the sound of a group who, with each record, becomes a more realized version of itself.
We made Wolvserpent's Blood Seed lp our Record Of The Week on list #358 back in November of last year, Wolvserpent being the group previously known as Pussygutt, a male/female duo from Idaho capable of crafting grimly powerful blackened folk flecked dronescapes that defy easy categorization. And as we mentioned then, the name Pussygutt probably put off plenty of people, thus the shift to Wolvserpent, and while that name definitely better captures the group's ominous tone and black metal leanings, it still leaves much about the music, and its makers, quite mysterious.
Yet for as much as we dug Pussygutt, and love their new Wolvserpent incarnation, we somehow managed to miss completely, the Wolvserpent lp that preceded Blood Seed, a record called Gathering Strengths. Thankfully, the mighty Crucial Blast have stepped in, and combined both Blood Seed AND Gathering Strengths into a handsome double disc compendium, the first disc of which, is the first time on cd for the aforementioned Blood Seed, two epic sprawls, the first a haunting bit of dirgey folk, laid over lush shimmery drones, a gorgeous funeral lament, that only hints at the abject brutality these two are capable of, instead, simply invoking a darkly melancholic mood, eventually guitars drift in, plucking out simple sad melodies, while the strings continue to swirl and soar, gorgeously tense and intense, cinematic and soundtracky. It's not until nearly the nine minute mark that the drums come in, as do the electric guitars, laying down a sort of skeletal doom framework, a different kind of downtuned slowbuild creep, pounding drums, muted riffage, the strings and Sunroof!-like drones growing in intensity, a super intense bit of droney tribal drift, but with an odd start stop arrangement, peppering the lush droning plod with little bits of more traditionally metallic riffage. Eventually some shrieked vocals swoop in, and the song stretches out into a strangley psychedelic epic, a bastardized mix of Godspeed like post rock, avant ur-drone drift, funeral doom, and glacial black metal buzz, all muted and blurred as if mixed by Tim Hecker.
The second 'movement' takes up right where the first left off, long layered high end tones, a lush undulating upper register dronescape, haunting and hypnotically shimmery, before finally lurching into some seriously metallic crunch, a lumbering doomy dirge, buzzing riffs, caveman drums, all wrapped in swirling swaths of reverbed vocals and superdistorted streaks of ambient melody, erupting into occasional blasts of uptempo chuggery, but always slipping back into that stuttery creep, and constantly wreathed in a lush otherworldly sonic haze.
Which brings us to Gathering Strengths, originally released on lp by Olde English Spelling Bee back in 2009, like Blood Seed, a single track split into two epic parts, the first, subtitled "Silence Within", begin with the chirping of crickets, which is soon joined by some haunting distant low end thrum, a dreamlike swell, which is soon joined by a more intense layer of buzzing tones, overlapping woodwinds, rife with mysterious overtones, a creepy harmony, the buzz and shimmer drifting in and out, the minimal drift gradually coalescing into an intense bit of dronemusic, like a blackened Phil Niblock, while off in the distance, barely there percussion surfaces, fragmented slo-mo rhythms, while more and more layers are piled on top, super intense and trancelike, until the woodwinds drift off, leaving a feedback laced stretch of blackdronedrift, softly clattery and corrosive, A wolf Eyes-ian industrial sprawl, that transforms into some hauntingly lovely gypsy like folk, driven by a mournful fiddle melody, the sound swells and smolders, all lilting melodies, and cinematic atmosphere, the vibe like a doom folk Astor Piazolla, that is until a MASSIVE avalanche of washed out downtuned doomcrush rolls in, that gorgeous fiddle now all tangled up in a heaving SUNNO)))-like churn, which manages to be both brutal and blackened, dreamy and so totally lovely. Impossibly pretty heaviness, this whole double disc worth it for that 5 or 6 minute stretch alone.
But there's still the second part, that one subtitled "Spirit Walker", this one starts off in seriously gorgeous drone-folk mode, the band laying down a lush, mesmerizing, hauntingly tense layered drone backdrop, over which the violin keens and cries, accompanied by simple shamanistic drumming, the result a darkly mesmerizing glimpse into some lost forest glade, where some shadowy priest like visages are gathered around dancing black flames, conjuring up spirits from another realm, but like the first track, this one too gradually grows heavier, with the addition of a slow thick dirge-y doomy riff, not super distorted or grumbly, but more softly buzzy, the chords ringing out and fading until they seem to bleed into the sounds around them, only to have the next chord take over, what we said about the last few minutes of the first track, well, we could say it about this whole track, worth the price of admission all on its own, a hazy tranced out chunk of heavy, heady, forest folk drone drift bliss.
Both records are incredible, and work amazingly well together, and like Pussygutt before, Wolvserpent continue to hone their unclassifiable sound, a melding together of dark hushed folk, minimal drone music, and blackened dooooooom. Their name change probably won't really make 'em much more commercially appealing, but who needs that, when you're ruling the darkened otherworld of psychedelic avant heaviness???
As we've said before, regular aQuarius shoppers should know what to expect from Wooden Stake: female fronted, horror fixated, riff rituals of slomo sludge, that are part Black Sabbath, part Jex Thoth, part Obituary. The first thing we ever listed by 'em, a limited cd-r entitled Vampire Plague Exorcism, proved quite popular, and is now totally out of print. But, now you'll find those tracks again here, on this new compact disc which collects that 2010 debut together with a bunch of other rare, out-of-print recordings (an unlucky 13 cuts in all) from this cult doom/death duo (one boy, one girl, all ghoulish).
Here's what we said about Vampire Plague Exorcism (tracks 9-13 here), which pretty much sums up the entire Wooden Stake ouvre:
So it's beginning to seem like it's a happening new quasi genre of sorts, this "doomy, black magic metal band with witchy sounding female frontperson" thing. There's Jex Thoth, and The Devil's Blood, and Blood Ceremony... and now Wooden Stake, an extremely doomy duo who've seen more horror movies than you have, featuring Vanessa Nocera on vocals and bass, with Wayne "Elektrokutioner" Sarantopoulos handling the guitars, keyboards, and drums. Like the other abovementioned bands, Wooden Stake is Sabbathy and '70s, with lumbering riffs and an occult vibe, though the difference is that they come from more of a death metal background, and are thus a lot darker and creepier. Electrokutioner is in a bunch of other doomed-out death metal bands we like, among 'em Decrepitaph, Scaremaker, and Encoffination; Vanessa is also in Scaremaker, and just joined Skeletal Spectre. So the guitars are not just thick but EVIL, the plodding drumming has a caveman wallop, and Vanessa's spooky siren song singing style sometimes switches to guttural growls. Imagine Jex Thoth wearing an Incantation t-shirt. Very underground sounding for sure, underground as in "from the grave".
But, say you've got V.P.E. already. Besides the upgrade to an actual cd, what else do you get here? Plenty. In fact, everything, almost, apart from last year's full-length Dungeon Prayers And Tombyard Serenades. There's the 2 cuts from the Black Caped Carnivore 7" (about which we said, that the title track was perhaps the best we'd yet heard from 'em), 2 more from an earlier 7" we never got (Invoke The Ageless Witch), their song from a split 7" with Druid Lord, and for completeness' sake (since it's actually still available), the 2 tracks from their great split cd with Blizaro. You might have some of this stuff, but we didn't even have it all... And also there's one previously unreleased song, "Night Of The Banshee"! So, definitely an essential collection for Wooden Stake fans who might have missed out on any of those limited edition releases, or alternately a fine place to start becoming a Wooden Stake fan if you're into the idea of checking out their brand of heavy & haunting metal, bewitched and brutal... The cd's booklet includes full lyrics, thumbnail cover graphics from all the featured releases, and a pair of b&w pictures of the two bandmembers (in which you'll see Wayne proudly brandishing a truly horrific, eldritch looking guitar, something like a Lovecraftian flying-V, all melted and monstrous).
The grim and ghoulish doom/death duo of Wayne (aka Elektrokutioner) and Vanessa (aka the Funeral Mistress??) are back with a seven inch slab of thick black vinyl to stab thru yr ears... well ok, it's plastic and not pointy, but does the job Wooden Stake style regardless. After their (now totally out of print) debut cd-r Vampire Plague Exorcism, and more recent split cd with AQ faves Blizaro, maybe you know what to expect from Wooden Stake: female fronted, horror fixated, riff rituals of slomo sludge, that are part Black Sabbath, part Jex Thoth, part Obituary... they deliver all that here, with the A-side alone being one of their best songs we've heard yet.
Real soon we'll also have WS's debut full length cd, the awesomely titled Dungeon Prayers & Tombyard Serenades, so watch out!!
In the meantime, grab this two song 7", it's limited to 500 hand-numbered copies....
Now, our appetites fully whetted by their debut out of print cd-r ep, their more recent split cd with Blizaro, and their 7" single reviewed last list, here at last is the first full-length from the ultra-cult (cultra?) Wooden Stake, one of the only boy-girl doom-death duos around, and in any case our fave, as the most "extreme metal" example of the female-fronted occult rock mini-phenomenon happenin' now, a la Jex Thoth, Blood Ceremony, The Devil's Blood, etc.
We've described 'em as playing "slomo sludge", that's "part Black Sabbath, part Jex Thoth, part Obituary" and that's still just about right. Yeah, imagine Jex Thoth occasionally channelling her inner Cookie Monster, that'd be Wooden Stake's Vanessa Nocera. She's the wicked, witchy woman on vocals and bass, while Wayne "Elektrokutioner" Sarantopoulos (also of Decrepitaph, Encoffination, Father Befouled, etc.) handles the guitar and drums, and would slay you in a staring contest, no doubt, to judge from his picture here.
Their music is scary stuff, too, and also wonderfully underground, old-school, and horror-kitschy. The album opens with "Cadaverum Caecorum Liber", yet another of metal's tributes to the Blind Dead movies, from '70s Spain. Nocera first intones the lyrics in spoken rather than sung style, double tracked, over a quietly gloomy guitar backing, lulling and almost lovely, before busting out some raspier vokills (and she'll have you know, by the way, that no effects were used on her voice anywhere on this album). The next track, "Salem, 1692", showcases her more melodic siren song style of singing, that's where the Jex Thoth comparisons come in (and we're also thinking Bliss Blood, a bit). But her throat-shredding deathlier vocals are also employed for contrast. Musically, the gloominess of course continues, lo-fi rumbling riff repetition that's a doomic delight, grinding down down down into the ground. And so it goes, the many moods of Wooden Stake (gloomy, gloomier, gloomiest) highlighted by the multitracking of Nocera's varied vocal personas - she's a one-woman coven, indeed.
All nine of the Dungeon Prayers and Tombyard Serenades found here hit the spot for us, this album never lacking for eldritch atmosphere, whether conveyed by quiet creepiness or loud riffiness. Ferinstance, behold the instrumental interlude "Cemetery Closes At Sundown", a gentle somber solo, leading into the lumbering lurch-out of "Skullcoven", a composition combining bashing brutality with sloppy psychedelic Sabbathry. Which would describe a lot of this record, really. Electric Wizard fans, here's a witchier witchcult for you!
Well, hopefully we've already convinced you in previous reviews to worship Wooden Stake, and like us, you were just waiting for this to come out. But if you haven't yet been initiated, appropriate attention to this album under certain conditions (by the light of the full moon, in a graveyard) ought to do the trick...of course, that's right where it puts you, anyway.
So it's beginning to seem like it's a happening new quasi genre of sorts, this "doomy, black magic metal band with witchy sounding female frontperson" thing. There's Jex Thoth, and The Devil's Blood, and Blood Ceremony... and now Wooden Stake, an extremely doomy duo who've seen more horror movies than you have, featuring Vanessa Nocera on vocals and bass, with Wayne "Elektrokutioner" Sarantopoulos handling the guitars, keyboards, and drums.
Like the other abovementioned bands, Wooden Stake is Sabbathy and '70s, with lumbering riffs and an occult vibe, though the difference is that they come from more of a death metal background, and are thus a lot darker and creepier. Electrokutioner is in a bunch of other doomed-out death metal bands we like, among 'em Decrepitaph, Scaremaker, and Encoffination, the latter of which is also highlighted this list; Vanessa is also in Scaremaker, and just joined Skeletal Spectre. So the guitars are not just thick but EVIL, the plodding drumming has a caveman wallop, and Vanessa's spooky siren song singing style sometimes switches to guttural growls. Imagine Jex Thoth wearing an Incantation t-shirt. Very underground sounding for sure, underground as in "from the grave". So underground in fact that we didn't even think we'd ever get to list this, their debut 5-track ep, as it was limited to a mere 100 copies, and sold out before we could get any. But fortunately Hexamorphosis Productions (a sub label of old school death metal purveyors Razorback by the way) decided to have another handful of these pro-printed cdr-s pressed up, so now we have them, for the moment, at least.
If you miss out, though (and also if you don't), be aware there's a less limited, upcoming full length to look forward too, and also a split release they'll soon be doing with recent AQ Record Of The Weekers BLIZARO!
Well, heck this is a no-brainer, gotta be stoked by this, considering that we highlighted Wooden Stake's debut ep Vampire Plague Exorcism last list, and made Blizaro's recent full-length City Of The Living Nightmare a Record Of The Week not long before that too! Obviously, eagerly awaited, so Hail Satan it's here already - the split release that sees these horror lovin' lunatics together on one cd with exclusive new material. First up, there's the deathly, doomed-out duo Wooden Stake, one of the heaviest and gnarliest of the current wave of female fronted "occult rock" acts a la Jex Thoth and The Devil's Blood; followed by (mostly) one-man band Blizaro, who continues to channel the sinister soundtracks of Italian giallo film through a psychedelic, DIY doom metal prism. Totaling five songs, 43 minutes (two tracks, 14'44" of Wooden Stake; three tracks, 27'53" of Blizaro) this disc is a delirious dose of underground doom weirdness indeed.
Wooden Stake gallop into view with "Death Reads The Black Tarot", Vanessa Nocera's witchy wail leading the charge, somberly supported by the rumbling riffage and bashing battery of Wayne Sarantopoulos (aka drummer Elektrokutioner, of Decrepitaph, Father Befouled, and Encoffination infamy, among others). Their other offering, "The Legend Of Blood Castle" is equally grim and gruesome, the Blood Castle practically coagulating around your ears as you listen to its legend...
Then the balance of the disc is given over to the bizarre progged-out rites of Blizaro, conducted via copious quantities of lumbering bass heavy trudge, psychotic vox, and psychedelic six string freakout. The tracks "Night Fumes" and "Edgar's Blood" are both about one half maniac metal chuggery, one half ominous church organ atmospheres, with a bit more melody on the metal side of the equation with regards to the latter. And then Blizaro winds things up with the calm yet creepy synth soundscape, "Final Escape/Zombie Feast", a Moog-laden mood piece. Nice!
Limited edition release, never to be repressed, FYI.
Come the Thaw is the brand new 2nd album from San Francisco's female fronted gothic downer doom trio Worm Ouroboros, which now features Aesop Dekker (Agalloch, Ludicra, Hickey) on drums, as well as bassist/guitarist/cover artist Lorraine Rath (The Gault, Amber Asylum) and guitarist/vocalist Jessica Way (World Eater). We really liked WO's self-titled 2010 debut, also on cult metal label Profound Lore, and are finding that this new one is just as dreamy and depressive, pretty and portentous as before, another slow-moving slab of their "4AD doom" stylings, with ethereal female vocals once again gently hovering over sparse, serene, sorta post-rock soundscapes. The metal factor is actually LESS evident than on their debut; while a few parts do get momentarily heavy with the guitars, it's mostly rather restrained in that regard, or at least seems to be, Worm Ouroboros channelling the likes of Dead Can Dance even more than before. Which is, really, quite nice. And somber, and hushed, and blissful...
On Profound Lore, which has developed quite the reputation as an interesting metal label across several genres ('tis always worth listening to what they deem worthy of release, we'd say) comes the debut from Worm Ouroboros, a Bay Area based trio that notably includes singer/bassist Lorraine Rath formerly of blackened gothic doomsters The Gault (also ex-Amber Asylum). The trio is completed by guitarist/vocalist Jessica Way and drummer Justin Green, who both play in a crusty death-doom metal act called World Eater.
Although Worm Ouroboros has its doomy aspects, it's pretty far from crusty, or even often metal, really! The music on this disc is really mostly quite gentle, with hushed lovely vocals and somnolent instrumental atmospheres. It's all vaguely medieval (in a folky, not metal way) and meditative, dark and dreamy, though these songs do have post-rock style loud-soft dynamics, allowing for some heavy distorted doom riffage to kick in occasionally, and always majestically. Much of the time, though, Worm Ouroboros is all about the interweaving of delicate drifting guitar, clean female vocals (the two ladies in the band sometimes sing harmonies), poetic lyrics, and restrained drumming.
When we first put this on, it started off in that near ambient ethereal mode, and we were thinking, hmm, hope this doesn't turn out to be boring, or too "Lilith Fair", but pretty soon we were thoroughly entranced, it's total ear candy that compels repeat spins. It flows beautifully, whether mellow or more "metal", and even when the waters are churned by heavier guitar/drums passages the mood still remains calm, soothing somehow. Never headbanging, maybe head-cradling though, face in hands, weeping, perhaps from sadness, perhaps from joy...
Slow and sinuous, this sometimes reminds us of forgotten Finnish art-metal act Decoryah from the '90s (which is strange, since they were so unique we're rarely reminded of 'em, in fact, haven't even thought of them for ages, heck now we're gonna go put a Decoryah cd on!). To mention some perhaps better known bands that this also evokes, in ways, at times: Katatonia, Isis, Amber Asylum, Sigur Ros, Hammers Of Misfortune, and of course The Gault... So, can we call it gothic downer doom rock folk prog? Yes indeed. There's even a bit of flute (helping to make the heaviness of the epic 11 minute "Riverbed" be even more progged out), and magically tinkling glockenspiel! Most definitely, another unusual winner (as far as we're concerned) from Profound Lore.
Pounding, ugly, crusty doomcore from this Seattle metal band, mastered by Steve Austin of Today Is The Day (not that it matters terribly much who masters something, but Mr. Austin's name will give you an idea where these folks are coming from). Other hints:
We only really started getting into Wormwood in the last few years, a shame really as they've been at it since 1997, and have now, after 11 years, decided to hang it up. Commemorated by this 7", which is all the more sad, cuz it's fucking awesome.
The A side begins all tribal drumming, and crunchy detuned guitars, creepy buzzing synths and howled almost yelped vocals, crushing and dirgey and hypnotic and like a lot of Wormwood stuff heavily indebted to Neurosis and the other band of that time and scene. But the B side is THE jam. A furiously fierce slab of lurching stop start slow motion power violence. The drums and guitar locked into a stuttery abstract non-groove, the vocals howling along, getting into some serious Harvey Milk territory almost, feedback ringing out in the pauses a la Eyehategod, one of those parts that must make lesser bands weep openly, but it is Wormwood, so of course, they manage to confound, by switching gears partway through, and unfurling something more melodic, with some surprising female vocals, which give the track a strange sort of Viking black metal vibe. And then it's done. We'll miss 'em, but these two tracks are definitely a perfect so long and fuck off. And if you somehow missed their Starvation record, pick it up, you do not know what you've been missing.
Incredible packaging! Metallic silver ink on thick black cardstock, lyrics printed on the inside in some cool mysterious font, a full color photo affixed to the front with those antique photo corners, each one hand numbered, inside a thick cardstock insert, also printed in silver, with another full color photo affixed to it, the whole thing is super striking.
LIMITED TO ONLY 300 COPIES.
The power of gloom and doom!! And the glory! It's all on full display here, yes indeed, as rolling waves of doomed out, fuzzed filled riffage emanate from this, the latest slab of slow and low heavosity from the UK's epic doom mongers The Wounded Kings. Ahhh, the sound of overdriven vintage tube amps! With occasional atmospheric embellishment from sad acoustic guitar and church organ keyboards when they want to indulge their more proggy and introspective inclinations (as on the moody interlude "Space Conqueror" for instance).
To top it off, The Wounded Kings' generals are gathered in their masses like witches at black masses by the commandingly creepy, husky and haunting vocals of Sharie Neyland, who initially stepped up to the mic on The Wounded Kings' previous album, In The Chapel Of The Black Hand. Now fully integrated into the band and their writing process, she's an even more crucial presence this time. Imagine a Jex Thoth who's lived the life of Ozz, doing drugs and drink, biting bats and doves, having visions. Or, Mark "The Shark" Shelton of Manilla Road, with a sex-change. Or, hopefully you've heard that Darkscorch Canticles compilation of '70s proto-metal we made Record Of The Week recently - specifically, you know the track "Warlord" by the band Wrath, with the girl singing who sounds like brainwashed cultist? 'Cause we think Neyland sounds kinda like her, but all growed up, even more certain in her beliefs, her voice aged deeper and dronier. It's a weird, wicked, wailing warble, enhanced by effects, that incredibly suits the hypnotically stretched-out Sabbath/Vitus sludge of The Wounded Kings.
'Tis true, female-fronted occult rock and doom acts are quite thick on the ground these days, it's kind of the in thing, many of them quite good (Blood Ceremony, Purson, the aforementioned Jex Thoth, etc.). If we now count The Wounded Kings as part of that scene, they still stand apart, sounding "old" but not "retro", if that makes sense, and also being so much HEAVIER than most. Their closest competition would probably be the mighty Windhand, but Windhand generally doesn't have "clean" vocals, so that's a big difference. Besides, we figure that The Wounded Kings, who originally had a male vocalist, hired on Neyland not 'cause they just wanted a "female singer" but because they wanted HER unique vocals, sounding like a witness to the abyss, so synergistic with their preexisting epick aesthetic.
Once again, a success, from one of the best in the realm of the oh so gloriously doomy and gloomy.
Wow, what a surprising piece of downer metal artistry from a band we'd never heard of before! Though, we were curious about 'em 'cause this, their debut, is one of the first two releases from the new Eichenwald Industries imprint, which is closely related to the limited edition Paradigms label, who have put out a lot of cool stuff you probably have. On this, the Dartmoor, UK duo known as The Wounded Kings play classic, epic, dark doom metal (a la Sabbath) with an especially druggy, spaced out, very psychedelic vibe. The very first, and title track, sets the tone, being a three-part suite beginning with some proggy organ drone... soon joined by funeral paced, fuzzed-out guitar... and cleanly sung, eerie echo-effected vocals with a melancholic, Ozzyish croak to 'em. The album continues with much more in the way of morose heaviness, epic-ness, and ambience, full of the sort of sludgy riffs we like, having quite a haunted, occult vibe.
This should appeal to fans of both Electric Wizard and Witchcraft. Clearly their record collections include a lot of '70s psych and possibly also Italian prog too... there's hints of Goblin going on here with the organ and all. We might also cite Trouble, very early Cathedral, Fall Of The Idols, Wizar'd, Solstice, Reverend Bizarre, and early Candlemass (Epicus Doomicus era)... the obscure Detroit '80s act Coven too if you've ever heard them... all could be referenced to describe The Wounded Kings' somber sound. Definitely some recommended, traditional (but not too traditional) DOOM here, folks!
Bow down doom hounds, the third full-length opus of spaced out sludge trudge from these British heavies is here! In most respects, exactly as expected, slow and low and psychedelic. But, they've changed up one (big) thing. Get this: in our review of their previous disc, The Shadow Over Atlantis, we suggested that the many fans of their labelmates Jex Thoth might dig the The Wounded Kings too, due to similar sonics and aligned atmospherics. Well, now that's even more the case, as on this album suddenly the Kings have a female singer, a la Jex Thoth! Not sure why they made this move (the popularity of Jex Thoth, The Devil's Blood, Blood Ceremony, et. al. in the "New Wave Of Female Fronted Occult Metal" trend couldn't possibly be the reason, could it?) but it was a good one, really. Not that we didn't like their original singer (former bassist George Birch, now out of the band) but we're really digging new singer Sharie Neyland's haunting, yet commanding, presence on this platter. Also, it makes perfect sense, considering that The Wounded Kings already had the spooky-proggy organ sound of Italian horror movie scores as a big influence upon their sound. Female vox fit in quite well with that vibe, and, as those other aforementioned bands also have demonstrated, sound good in conjunction with dirgey, lumbering, Sabbath-derived riffage.
And they're not just "female vox" anyway, there's an eccentric personality here. With her wavery, witchy, fairly low for a female voice, Neyland sounds something like a weird hybrid of Jex Thoth and Manilla Road's Mark "The Shark" Shelton... really! Now that's cult. Take that voice and let it range o'er epic effected hypnotic heaviness along the lines of early Cathedral or Electric Wizard (with a dash of Blizaro), and you've got In The Chapel Of The Black Hand.
So. Not just another Wounded Kings album (though that would have been fine too) but one that stands apart, if not above. Phantasmagorically recommended.
We described this British doom duo's debut in 2008 as being Sabbathy doom metal with a particularly druggy, spaced-out vibe... well they've returned and are even more druggy and spaced-out than before! This isn't doom that crushes you (though they can get quite heavy) but rather doom that envelops you, doom you sink into... like the warm embrace of sleep - or like Atlantis sinking into the ocean, the mythic cataclysm about which it appears this is a concept album (that's doom!). Thus, 'tis dark, majestic, mournful. With that mood in mind, the cover art and font used really capture the look of '60s paperback pulp sci-fi / fantasy novels, and we do know The Wounded Kings take much inspiration from both literature and the occult. They also cite several of our '70s proto-metal and prog rock faves: Night Sun, Museo Rosenbach, Hairy Chapter, Gracious, May Blitz, Alphataurus, Earth and Fire, and Van Der Graaf Generator, among others. Though what we hear could possibly best be described by suggesting one imagine UFOmammut, Witch, or Electric Wizard, ultra qualuuded and heavy lidded, at their most '70s proggish and beauteous. Also, this being on I Hate Records, it occurs to us that Jex Thoth fans (and would-be fans, those turned off by the singing in that band) ought to dig the music here.
The first track is called "The Swirling Mist" and is aptly named, describing the Wounded Kings' sound altogether. Their doomy gloomy guitar riffs are sluggishy smeared across this whole disc, almost becoming one continuous psychedelic downer drone stretching from song to song; songs which trudge forth in gorgeous glorious misery, driven by plodding drums, embellished with eerie Goblinesque chiming of keys, ofttimes gothically graced with vocal lamentations delivered a spooky shivery deep voice, reverb effected, all contributing to this album's very much haunted and melancholic feel. As does the trance inducing slo-mo psych guitar soloing and comforting organ buzz throughout. Also, some of our favorite moments are the most mellowed out ones: the gentle piano/drone interlude "Into The Ocean's Abyss" is both sad and beautiful, one of two brief instrumentals here (the other, "Deathless Echo"), among the much more epic, heavier tracks. We'd certainly recommend this Wounded Kings album to not only our true doom and doom-drone regulars but also folks into current indie psych and even cold wave acts, you might find something to grab you... and envelop you... and dreamily doom you, here!
There's just something about doom that is so soothing. To us at least. And we're of course not just talking about regular old doom, we're talking doom, with multiple 'o's, the more the doomier!!!
Wraith Of The Ropes is a duo from Ohio of all places, who practice a sort of horror funereal doom.
The core sound is slow, lumbering, downtuned, depressive, a massive plodding crush, all minor key misery and slow motion propulsion. With little flurries of wild double kick drum and moaning low end rumble. The sound of huge furry beasts trudging through some subterranean swamp in the pits of hell. Majestic and epic as well as depressive and miserable. And then the vocals... surprisingly un-doomlike, almost more like death metal vocals, raspy and guttural and wrapped in all sorts of effects.
But where the band really deviate from the traditional funereal doom path, is the unlikely addition of piano, and the sort of cinematic vibe that permeates all of these tracks. The piano parts are pure creepiness, minor key and tinkling in thick fields of fuzzy reverb, it ends up sounding like a doom metal Goblin, which is a very good thing! This stuff would be the perfect soundtrack to the next Dario Argento movie, you can almost see the screaming nightgown clad teenager, running through the woods in the dead of night, being pursued by some mysterious figure, or a young girl running hysterically though some huge old house swarming with insects. The massive swaths of downtuned guitars, the delicate pianos, the raspy roar, the haunting Halloween like keyboard melodies, how fucking scary is this stuff!! These guys should definitely be scoring some serious fright films. But odds are you stopped reading this review way back, cuz if you're anything like us, we had you at "doom metal Goblin"!
Dust In Our Mouths from Scottish black ambient dronelords Wraiths, is the final installment in the group's extended blackdrone trilogy/triptych which started with Oriflamme released on Aurora Borealis, continued with The Grey Emperor, released on At War With False Noise and finally finds its resolution here, in a nearly hour long track the label describes as "a crushing noise ritual from the dark realms of plague and grim death", which perhaps paints to noisy a picture, as anyone whose been following Wraiths over the last two records, have watched the band transform into something much more abstract and ambient, shedding much of the harsh noise that defined their early sound in favor of gorgeous grim atmospherics. Dust In Our Mouths, in fact, opens with some haunting blackened drift, lush chordal swells, all anchored by a hypnotic, looped, almost dubbed out rhythm, just a simple softly stuttery snare, and gently tinkling chimes. In the background, there lurks all manner of sonic misery, heaving slabs of corrosive low end, disembodied spectral howls, sheets of jagged feedback, but those are relegated to background ambience, the first few minutes gorgeously hypnotic, spare and skeletal, almost like some black metal band doing their best minimal abstract dub, a hushed sort of industrial ambience, it's not really until about 20 minutes in, that the song shifts dramatically, not necessarily noisier, but that dubby rhythm is replaced by lush dreamily distorted shimmers, and blurred melodic drift, it's almost Caretaker-ish in fact, woozy and washed out, but here that wistfulness is underpinned by an ominous grimness that manifests itself as a dense spectral hum, roiling with shadows of black noise, but that noise is definitely obscured by the woozy wash of smeared surf-like shimmer.
The drums return, more of an ominous sort of death march, still buried in the murk, that murk growing ever more intense, blossoming into a blown out black buzz, and eventually splintering into squalls of muted feedback, only achieving full on noise about 40 minutes in, where things become chaotic and dense and intense, but even here, the sound is infused with all manner of hidden melody and swirling textures, the sharp edges smoothed out, resulting in a heaving crumbling wall of blurred blackness, churning its way through clouds of hiss and hum and howl, until finally disappearing in a cloud of swirling FX heavy white noise, emerging on the other side, to play out its last few seconds as a skeletal sprawl of loping reverbed drift. Awesome.
This record has been floating around in various forms, all insanely limited, and as the title suggests, it was initially a cassette, then a cd-r, then a download, and is only now finally available as a slightly less limited lp, still titled Black Cassette of course, and regardless of format, it's a serious slab of mathy doomy electronics laced sludge, a bit of an odd one for The Flenser, who traffic mostly in metal of the blacker variety, but Wreck And Reference have a sound that is most definitely blackened, and in some ways just as grim and kult and bleak as most black metal. The sound is a wild almost industrial sounding chaotic lurching heavy sludge, with clean vox, thick blown out bass, tons of effects and loads of swirling electronics, a heaping dose of pop liberally applied too, with much of the record playing out like a sort of slowcore indie rock.
The first track was all it took to convince us, a jagged lumbering chunk of dirge pop, with crumbling super distorted guitars, pounding drums, crooned clean vocals, a killer main hook, everything wreathed in buzz and glitch, rife with long stretches of droned out shimmer, and rumbling detuned buzz, and wild squalls of psychedelic feedback, the drums growing more and more chaotic, eventually the guitars following suit, stuttering, all clipped stops and starts before grinding to a halt. So ruling. The following track is more of a moody brooder, a bass driven chunk of slowcore, with clean vocals delivered way back from the microphone, giving the proceedings a definite nineties math rock vibe, think Shellac or Slint, and when the band does finally kick in, the guitars crunch, the drums pound, this time everything is beneath thick sheets of heavily effected synths, making everything deliriously spacey and dreamy. The rest of the tracks offer more of the same, a variation on doom we've never heard before, a Torche like approach to metal, definitely heavily influenced by indie rock, pop and post punk, sung/spoken vox over tribal drumming and grinding muddied riffage, big drumming over muted buzz and what sounds like haunting piano, not to mention deep dramatic crooning, a strangely blurred blast transformed into something much poppier and prettier, long stretches of shimmery spaciness and still more surprisingly poppy vox, and finally, a killer chunk of slow building post rock epicness that sounds a bit like a doomier, more post punky take on Godspeed. A pretty weird, and pretty awesome band, and definitely one of the coolest things The Flenser has put out, which is definitely saying a lot.
You can tell a lot about a band before you even get to the music. Take Wreck Of The Hesperus for example. First, they're called Wreck Of The Hesperus, and their album is called The Sunken Threshold. It all sounds sort of heavy and evil, destructive and brutal. The the cover, a confusional tangle of thorns and branches and tentacles, inside, the same tangle is augmented by the bands logo, a nearly indecipherable WOTH with both the W and the H sporting bat wings. Yep. Along the spine it says "There was nothing anywhere but blackness and horror and silence and bones." Finally, the band consists of Ghandi Uncunnigham on "untelligence & unenthusiasm," R. Mongo on "poisonous pulse" and finally Count Rodge on "lowering of the tone." Plus they're on Aesthetic Death, the same label as UK drug doom lords Esoteric and Finnish doomcrust outfit Stumm. So what exactly does that all tell us? Besides the fact that we were already pretty much gonna buy it? It's that we need to get out our stash of extra 'o's. As in this is some serious doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom. Not so much glacial spaced out sludge as crusty bile spewing drug doom. Closer to Eyehategod than Esoteric. Although fans of either will be in downtuned doom heaven for sure. Three tracks, 42 minutes, single riffs stretched out into ten plus minute dirges, the drums a spaced out dinosaur plod, the riffs burst in a concussion of splintering sonics, only to wither into a distant shimmer before the next riff drops like an anvil, the bass is a constant monstrous rumble, the vocals are harsh and hellish, a blood curdling, throat shredding shriek that lurks behind every riff like some sort of demon waiting to pounce. The final track drifts into some super spaced out territory sounding a little like Khanate mixed with Codeine, a super spacious near-ambient slow-core trudge, with the bass taking up most of the space, the drums stumbling in the background, the vocals transformed into a animalistic whispery growl. Super creepy. Should definitely hit the spot for doom freaks into Moss, Monarch, Khanate, Marzuraan, Atavist, The Body, Catacombs and all those doom bands heavy on the ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo....
With a lineup including members of Leviathan, Twilight, Nachtmystium, Anatomy Of Habit and Yakuza, you could be forgiven for expecting this to be a buzzy blackened blast of metallic heaviness, and while there are moments of blackened heaviness here, in fact, You've Always Meant So Much To Me, is the latest composition / recording from long running experimental / ambient / avant classical project, Wreckmeister Harmonies, aka JR Robinson, who many aQ-ers might remember as the man responsible for that Vice documentary on one man black metal bands, but who has been performing and composing as Wreckmeister Harmonies since 2006, his compositions featuring an ever shifting cast of musicians and noisemakers, which in the past has included members of US Maple, the Jesus Lizard, Tortoise, and a handful of modern new jazz luminaries.
This time around, even with a heavy weight, primarily metal ensemble, You've Always Meant So Much To Me
is gorgeously minimal, a dark, droning, softly pulsing creep, something you might expect to be released on Miasmah or Type, a billowing black ambience, woven from softly layered chordal thrum, deep resonant low end rumbles, wheezing barely there horns, buried feedback, and disembodied vocalizations, all blurred into a lush expanse of slow moving sonic swells. Eventually, from within this droning drift, surfaces, little tangles of guitar melodies, sizzling arcs of keening high end, weird almost animal sounds, and then some haunting acoustic guitar, unfurling beneath the now dense ur-drone skree, before everything is enveloped in a cloud of sweeping, swirling strings, a darkly brooding, slow building majesty, that's aching and melancholic, the sound dense, and softly roiling, quickly growing darker and more dissonant, a blackness creeping in, the sounds atonal and angular, everything swaddled in a crumbling distortion, the collective's metal pedigree revealing itself as a blown out buzz, that splinters into a lurching, lumbering doom, downtuned and distorted, massive and pummeling, with harsh howled vokills, pounding and crushing and epic. But before you know it, the distortion fades, the drums disappear, leaving just swirling, buzzing sonic traces, creepy chant-like vocals, sheets of crumbling buzz, wrapped in more aching strings, blurred and bleary, a sort of black buzz drenched modern classical, all of which slowly fades, eventually leaving just a lush harmonium like drone, beneath soft spidery tendrils of acoustic guitar, the drone fading too, leaving just that lonely guitar, drift slowly and dreamily through a field of near silence.
Vinyl only, super limited (we got all we're gonna be able to get), pressed on virgin vinyl and packaged in a heavy old school tip-on style sleeve, with stunning cover art by Simon Fowler. Includes download.
Wrench are full on stoner/sludge rock, complete with space sound effects and downtuned key-of-C riff jams. They are akin to Monster Magnet & Kyuss with a healthy dose of psychedelia.
Second album from former Ozzy guitar demigod Zakk Wylde's solo Southern stoner-metal project Black Label Society. The first one was quite a surprise, revealing that not only is Zakk a man of fleet fingers on the fretboard, but that he possesses a talent for creating extremely heavy and melodic post-grunge stoner rock with whiskey-soaked vocals that blows the likes of late-model Corrosion of Conformity out of the (swamp) water. This new album is another testament to that. Definitely for fans of Acid Bath and Down! Now here's a message from the man himself, culled from an internet '80s-metal mailing list: This is a message from Zakk Wylde. To all you Society Dwelling Mother Fuckers, Wanted to let you know that Black Label Society's new disc, "Stronger Than Death" hits the street today. Go check it out! Its heavy as fuck, I'm doing this film right now with Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston called "Metal Gods" for Warner Bros. Its a metal movie from 1975-85 and it is going to kick ass. I'm doing all the guitars on the soundtrack. Nick Catanese is in the movie as well. The first single from Stronger Than Death is Counterfeit God and Mark Wahlberg plays bass in the video. Its fucking hesterical! Request the tune at radio and video at MTV. I need your support to make this
happen! Trying to get on the road with Motley, Megadeath and Anthrax. Going out with Pantera in the fall when they are done with Ozzfest. Also, Ozzy asked me to write his next disc which I can promise you will make Ozzmosis look like a BackStreet Boys cd. Send this e-mail to everyone on your list and BLEED BLACK LABEL. BLACK LABEL SOCIETY FUCK YEAH! All the best, Zakk Wylde
A super limited missive from Xela, aka John Twells, head honcho of the super kick ass Type label. But his work as Xela is much darker than his label might lead you to believe. His is a world of doom. Not old school heavy metal doom. But truly ominous darkened worlds of doom. His is not a doom of huge riffs and pounding drums, but instead, rumbling sinister drones, and haunting ambience. Crumbling black landscapes of mysterious buzz and whispered menace. The A side of this tape is like a field recording of a rickety old dock, jutting out into the choppy waters of the River Styx, old rust chains rattle, rusty lanterns clang against one another, the rotted wood groans and creaks, the wind howls, the choppy water laps at the pilings, black birds circle overhead, an old boat tied up to the dock rocking wildly in the water, straining against the frayed rope, while in the distance, an ominous buzz permeates the air like the stink of decaying flesh, and somewhere, below the surface of the water, or hidden behind the black clouds overhead, some unspeakable beast growls, his ominous rumble like thunder filling the sky.
The B side takes up where the first side left off, that same dock, being lashed by a fierce storm, but instead of rain and lightning, it's decaying black buzz, and howled vocals, a stumbling, lurching doomy drone, recorded on an old tape, the sound dropping out, the speed shifting, slowing down and speeding up, as much a part of the sound as the obfuscated riffs, and the creeping mournful melodies. Fucking awesome.
Red cassettes with metallic gold sticker, in a cryptic printed black and white sleeve, photocopied insert. LIMITED TO 111 COPIES. Already out of print. We got the last batch so act fast.
After four long years, and sadly the premature passing of keyboard player Doug Ferguson (RIP), Texas prog-psych juggernaut YETI is back. Their year 2000 album Things to Come... was a dark debut of bombastic instrumental space-rock. This new effort now at last carries on from that record in spirited fashion, the band maybe now even darker and doomier since visited by death. Heavy, gloomy, and apocalyptic, the four long tracks here rumble mightily, signalling to all that when Yeti names an album Volume Obliteration Transcendence they're not kidding around! They still pay homage to their '70s influences (Magma, Universe Zero and so forth), but with more vocals this time, from anguished growls to bizarre choral arrangements, all bathed in distortion. Lumbering riffs and drums recall old Swans, while their spacey phased synths offer a touch of Goblin. Plodding yet hectic. Spacey yet dense. It's a bit like Magma meets Neurosis. And it's a lot like AQ-faves Tarantula Hawk, former tour- and label- mates to Yeti. (The two bands certainly share a lot of qualities -- and fans.) This is an intense, abyssic record utterly recommended for those into heaviness AND proginess. Has there been a darker, dirgier album with mellotron on it than this one?
Dooming ever onward, Oregon's re-activated Yob are back with their 2nd Profound Lore release, the 6th full-length overall from this heavier-than-thou trio, and all Yob and/or doom fans (like us) should be well chuffed! After several years hiatus (during which singer/guitarist Mike Scheidt stayed doomy in his ill-fated Middian project), Yob's 2009 comeback album The Great Cessation emphasized the darker side of Yob, black metal influences to the fore, Yob still spacey and sludgey to be sure, but sounding way more EVIL and nihilistically negative than ever. They haven't brightened up much on Atma, either. There's something primal about these proceedings, Yob calling upon ancient powers with their heavy sonic rituals. It's serious business.
Scheidt still busts out his best, very metal, strangled shriek (a distorted blend of Ozzy, Geddy Lee, and the gargly Dan McCafferty of Nazareth) when he wants to soar (yay, that's what we came for!), but he also goes for a diversity of sore-throat wretched vokills as well; his melodic guitar leads likewise occasionally are heard, snaking out from the murky mire of rumbling riffage, the tarpit black hole in which Yob make their crusty cosmic home... the band's lumbering swing always buried beneath dirty piles of steel-wooly abused amp torture, Atma's production far from clean, instead filthy and cruel.
It's like some unholy combination of the Sabbathy sludge of Eyehategod, the brutal/beautiful bombast of Neurosis (whose Scott Kelly shows up as a guest on a couple of these songs), the most malevolent and monolithic of Melvins, and hint of the denim and leather of old school metal as well. The five loooooong songs here weave atmospheric gloom (the rainy forest field recordings found on the title track ferinstance), fist-in-the-air metallisms, post-rock dynamics, and angsty artiness into their sheer crushing DOOM, and do it all damn well. Make no mistake, this is hellishly heavy, including album-ender "Adrift In The Ocean", even with its semi-acoustic passages and whooshing ambience. Epic, awesome, utterly everything we expect from Yob and then some.
Ok, we've got one here for anyone into the sludgy, stoner sounds of the likes of Electric Wizard and Sleep!! Yob is perhaps your new favorite band. From Portland, Oregon, these psychedelic doom lords take their chosen genre's obligatory Black Sabbath worship to the extent of incorporating the swingin' jazzy/jammy aspects of the Sabbath sound that most doomsters tend to disregard. Nor do they skimp on the the meaner, rigidly metallic side of the Sabs, or on the mountains of the moon sized riffage doom fans require. Yob is slow motion, sweat leaf'd sludge to the max. Most notably, while their vocalist does dip into a demonic growl at times, mainly he soars like an insane, heavily effected hybrid of Ozzy and Geddy Lee. The result is a remarkably unique sound for a band that unquestionably wears their influences on their collective sleeve. The closest comparision would be to a spaced-out combination of Sleep and Dead Meadow. The three long tracks (18, 7, and 23 minutes) showcase a stoned style that even fuses funk with full-on dirge doom. There's a couple other fine doom metal releases on this weeks' list (Solitude Aeturnus, Well Of Souls). But while those bands' style is to build big castles, these guys tunnel through the earth, out the other side, and into outer space. Recommended.
Trampling you underfoot or simply, softly embracing in (muscular) arms of despair, the juggernaut of heaviosity known simply as Yob is back, offering up another four looong songs (all double digit durations) of their indeed epic extreme metal, a blackened blend of doom metal and post rock, with some seriously LOUD/soft dynamics. That they're now on Neurot with the cd release of this (vinyl via Relapse) makes sense, Yob somehow sounding more Neurosis-y than ever here, though still very much Yob, a distinction that comes from the guitar and especially the vocals of mainman Mike Scheidt, who does both throat-shredding death bellows and his trademark, heavily effected, clean, soaring singing here, which we always love.
This is, like, the band's 7th album, and really it's another doozy, for anyone into sheer, crushing riff sludge, majestically arranged. Track three, "Unmask The Spectre", could be this year's most perfect 15 minute marriage of melody, emotion, atmosphere, and utter heaviness - though track four, "Marrow", could be the best 18+ minutes of the same... Truly, the whole album's got plenty of all that, an over an hour long journey into the heart of the desolate dimension of Yob.
Yay Yob! Ever since our doom-lovin' hearts here at AQ first went pitter-pat for the heavy sounds of Portland Oregon's Yob, we've been wanting to sell you this here record, their debut from 2002. But, until now, we were never able to get any. By the time we reviewed and raved about their second album of super-doomy space sludge, 2003's Catharsis, Elaborations Of Carbon had already gone out of print. They've done two more awesome albums since Catharsis (and we'd witnessed some great shows too), so we're bigger fans that ever and it's nice to finally be able to stock the entire Yob discog, now that this is back in print. So if you've been loving their latest, The Unreal Never Lived, as well as The Illusion Of Motion and Catharsis, and you don't have this one, here you go! Thank you 12th Records for finally getting off the couch and putting away the bong long enough to get this repressed.
This debut is definitely the Yob we know and love -- the Sabbathy riffery, the psychedelic drones, the unique, weirdly soaring vocal style, it's all here. If we were reviewing Yob for the first time, we'd probably say something about how this sorta sounds like stoner legends Sleep, but with even more creepy atmospheres and a unique vocal approach that sounds like Geddy Lee doing an Ozzy impersonation through a ton of effects (that's a good thing, really!). And being the band's first record, you know it's gonna have some of their best riffs on it. Compared to their subsequent releases, this one also is notable for having more, shorter songs in its 70 minutes... though there's still only six and most of 'em exceed ten minutes, with two over 15 each. Now they write, like, half-hour songs, but it's not like the head-nodding doom on this disc seems cramped for space. Recommended to Yob fans of course and anyone who hasn't yet checked them out but likes Ufomammut, Corrupted, Electric Wizard, Sleep, and the rest of the doom brigade of which Yob became definite members in good standing as soon as this album was originally released.
Attention all fans of spaceward soaring sludge!!! In 2010, blackened doom-mongers yet all-around nice guys Yob left their Pacific Northwest environs to travel to Europe, appearing at the Roadburn Festival in Holland, which we know from experience to be just about the best fest that any metal/psych fan could ever hope to attend. Yob now join the elite ranks of such bands as Wolves In The Throne Room, Earthless, Bong, Church Of Misery, and most recently White Hills, in having their Roadburn performance released on disc! In this case (as it was with WITTR's), they've included both a cd and a dvd in the swank digipack package, Yob's show having been professionally filmed in no-frills fashion with multiple cameras as well as audio-recorded.
If you're a fan, pretty much all you need to know about something like is is, is the audio/video quality any good? And was their performance killer? The answer to all those questions is, yes... Yob slay live, and this release will prove it to anyone who hasn't yet seen 'em. In the hour allotted, they do four sprawling songs, "Quantum Mystic", "Burning The Altar", "Kosmos", and "The Great Cessation"; that's 2 from their most-recent-at-the-time The Great Cessation album, and 2 from their previous slab to that, The Unreal Never Lived.
Epic and intense as you might expect. There's no difference between the cd and dvd tracklists, it's of course the same songs either way, but if you want to SEE how heavy they are as well as hear 'em, you've got the visuals option. The set is structured nicely, crushing with riffy heaviness almost from the grinding get-go, but then "letting up" to space out psychedelically towards the end...
Oregonian space-sludge doom mongers YOB have been through a lot. After four albums together (all of 'em big AQ faves), and some success, things went awry. First, in 2006, the original band splits up (creative differences?). Then after some struggle, mainman Mike Scheidt (vocals/guitar) gets a new band together, the mighty Middian, whose album Age Eternal we highlighted back on list #263, two years ago. Good news for doom fans. But THEN, some stupid unknown band whose name isn't even spelled the same way as Middian's (one less d) threatens to sue them for, like, trademark infringement. Middian's label, Metal Blade, apparently deathly afraid of anything to do with lawyers, promptly drops 'em - and the Middian album, along with pretty much the entire earlier YOB discography, goes out of print! Good grief. Heck, but they're a doom band, so it's all grist for the mill. And after all, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. Perhaps taking all this as a sign that YOB should rise again, Scheidt teamed up once more with his former YOB (and H.C. Minds) bandmate, drummer Travis Foster, also enlisting new bassist Aaron Reiseberg. And now, on the ever-reliable Profound Lore label, we have the return of YOB, with what will undoubtedly be one of 2009's doomiest releases, The Great Cessation. Not really a cessation though, quite the opposite, a rebirth!
Engineered, mixed, co-produced by Sanford Parker (so you know it's heavy, probably the heaviest thing he's recorded since Samothrace), The Great Cessation sees YOB positively thriving on the negativity of the recent experiences. This is a meaner, darker, blacker YOB for sure. How can we tell? One clue is the graphic design (mostly all black!) and the new, more spiky, blackmetal-ly YOB logo. Then there's the lyrics and song titles ("Burning The Altar", "Silence Of Heaven", "The Lie That Is Sin", etc.) that indicate an (anti-) religious theme, in the black metal ballpark. Or, just listen...! The spaced out sounds of YOB are now so far into space they've entered a black hole. The five songs, one hour of music here brutally burst with surging waves of downtuned doom riffage, and distorted exotic snakecharmer guitar leads. There's also plenty of post rock dynamics, brief quiet acoustic interludes, melodic majesty, Neur-Isis crush, stoner swing... at times this suggests a blackened Sleep. And, the usual unique YOB-isms are present as well, especially Scheidt's trademark soaring vocals, electronically eerily treated and vaguely Geddy Lee-ish, mixed with belching death grunts. Imagine Dead Meadow meets My Dying Bride. And the final, title track definitely demonstrates this is in the tradition of vintage YOB, it's 20+ minutes long, after all! Talk about doomed. Call it a comeback. Recommended!
DOOoooooooOOOOM! We're not gonna stint on the O's in doom 'cuz this here's the third* album from the mighty Yob, who are Portland, Oregon's masters of massive doom-sludge. Think an unholy melding of Electric Wizard, Corrupted, Dead Meadow, and Ufomammut. Slow and low uber-heavy guitar and bass riffage, psychedelic space-out song structures, pummelling drums of doom, all perfectly topped by vocals that take to the skies like a heavily effected** hybrid of Ozzy and Geddy Lee, with the occasional descent into hellish death metal gutteralisms. Their previous album Catharsis was progtastically, trance-inducingly awesome, but The Illusion of Motion (their debut for unlikely new label Metal Blade!) may even be better. More dynamics, shifts of mood and tempo than before, and no slack on the heavosity scale. Yessir, they've become one of our favorite doom ensembles. And they're really nice guys too, as we discovered when we met them after the trio played in SF recently. Yes, we were lucky enough to witness Yob live for the first time at the 3 Days Of Darkness festival here in San Francisco last month. Despite some initial technical difficulties, once they got going they were unstoppable. And even the tech problems proved them to be true doom masters. Anyone with any doom/stoner rock cred knows about Orange amplification and how cool it is. And also the even rarer Green amps. But Yob not only was using Orange AND Green amps, but also Black. And when gremlims took out the Black amp, Yob then brought out... a White amp! Wow. But due to time constraints brought on by the aforementioned amp-switcheroo, they didn't get to play the new 26 minute epic that closes out this lengthy-but-only-four-song album (that's just one more than on Catharsis), so I hope they come back soon!
*if you're wondering, Yob's first album is out of print but soon due for a repress, we'll get 'em in when that happens of course.
**they don't sound anything like Jane's Addiction of course, but those vocals seem to use the Perry Farrell effect if you know what I mean.
Sure, there's doom/sludge albums we *don't* like. But this ain't one of 'em! We've loved Portland's Yob from day one, and with this fourth album The Unreal Never Lived, they only exceed our expectations yet again. Four new tracks that don't just bring the doom but also demonstrate Yob's weirdly progressive songwriting craft, with dynamics and surprises throughout -- along with, of course, a bludgeoningly blissful overdose of utter heaviness. This disc is another amazing Yob outing, with all the lopingly massive riffage, lengthy song structures, psychedelic space-outs, and uniquely effected/distorted soaring and sometimes growling vocals that have become their trademarks. Compared to their previous (excellent) album The Illusion Of Motion this isn't that different, just at least as good or better in all respects. Heck it's again got got four songs, the longest being the last, going past the 20 minute mark, just like Illusion. Disembowelment, UFOmammut, Electric Wizard, Corrupted, Boris, Pelican...along with the likes of those heavies we've got to herald Yob!
What do you get when you mix one part Swedish ultra dronelord Ondo, and one part French funereal doom sludge merchant The Austrasian Goat? Pretty much exactly what you might expect. And were probably hoping for. A sprawling expanse of abject sonic miserablism, huge heaving slabs of crumbling distortion and Teutonic rumble, thick swaths of buzz and rumble, tangled spidery minor key melodies, harsh hellish howls, extreme black ambience, or near glacial ultra doom, from the first track (of three) on, beginning with the above mentioned grim black crawl, the track seems to gradually ooze into something more drone than metal, the guitar chugs are blurred into long stretches of pitch black shimmer, eventually the track grows hushed, and ominous, a delicate drift of garbled voices and crystalline melody, all over a darkly swirling black sea of layered low end and slow shifting thrum. Eventually, things build back up with pounded reverbed piano, floating atop, ever escalating guitar drone incandescence, heavy and noisy, but weirdly pretty.
The second track, shortest of the three at a still impressive 16 minutes, starts off a billowing black cloud of sound, nightmarish ambience, laced with crackle and glitch, but mostly tranquil, if slightly malefic, the track explodes in a frenzy of almost black metal sounding fury, before slipping back into the blackened tranquility that preceded it, deep thick tones, slow motion melodies, echoing and filling the speakers with blackness, almost liturgical sounding, but some primitive black mass, some lost ritual, whispered voices lead the blackness, to a final climax of grinding crunch, lethargic riffage and chordal buzz, that gain manages to be lovely and heavy simultaneously.
Finally, the record closes with a soundtrack like sprawl of haunting otherworldly whisper and drift, tranquil, but foreboding, the piano returns, this time offering up haunting minimal melodies, while underneath, black winds whip and whirl, strings shimmer, all wrapped in a gauzey cloak of washed out buzz and distant low end rumble, like some strange hellish chamber music, or the soundtrack to some lost Italian horror film, gorgeously creepy and fiendishly evocative.
This one not so much for the doom metallers and sludgelords as much as for those who enjoy sounds both bleak and forlorn, miserable and depressingly beautiful, a creeping, soul stirring black ambient dronemusic, that is definitely heavy, but whose heaviness is tempered by the atmosphere, a soundworld grim and sinister, each of these sonic rituals a heavy black shroud for the dark of spirit.
Cool silver on black folded origami style sleeves, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Our friends in Hammers Of Misfortune did a US tour this summer, and when they got back, they said that of all the bands they played with, there was one they felt was definitely better than they were. (Only one you ask? Maybe that sounds arrogant on their part, but they're not arrogant, just self-confident... playing over-the-top operatic metal like they do, you've gotta be self-confident, eh?). They'd played with a lot of good bands they liked, but only one really blew 'em away: Minnesota's Zebulon Pike. That was enough for me -- I had to hear these guys! A trip to their website and some mp3 downloads later, off went my email to 'em, ordering cds. And now here they are, and they look quite nice too. But how they sound is what's important -- and the most concise, comparative description I can come up with for Zebulon Pike is something like Pelican meets The Fucking Champs. They're a heavy instrumental stoner/math rock band, with two guitarists who are all about the insane harmonies. The drummer and bassist get a workout too, what with the complex, dynamic song structures this band navigates. From ultra-sludgy riff attacks to mellow and pretty (even a bit jazzy) breakdowns, the melodic doom calculus of Zebulon Pike proceeds at a generally slow pace (nine or twelve minute long songs are the norm), interspersed with bursts of note-manic playing. You'll definitely hear the band's '70s influences of Wishbone Ash and Black Sabbath, translated into a modern instrumental post-rock realm. The band also goes beyond metal and prog to cite classical composers like Bela Bartok and Avro Part as inspirations to their "slow motion apocalypse". Mighty, mythic instrumental metal indeed. FYI Zebulon Pike takes their name from an early American explorer, the same guy for whom Pike's Peak is named.
Massive Minneapolis instru-metal discovered (for us) by our friends in Hammers Of Misfortune a few years back in 2004. We instantly became fans upon hearing their first album. As did many of you. They followed that with an equally powerful second album in 2006. Now, another 2 years later, they're up to album number three, and we're proud to have such a burgeoning Zebulon Pike section in our metal bin!
If you haven't heard ZP before, just imagine a mathy yet melodic, all-instrumental, and even more epick version of doomsters The Sword... Or, as we have said before, a mix of old Pelican and The Fucking Champs, with immense twin guitar harmonies and stonery heaviness. There's always been a "post-rock" side to 'em along with the metal, the post-rock coming on strongest on this third effort, with the the 2nd part of their loud-soft dynamics dialing up the atmospheric prettiness over significant stretches of these extended, and otherwise utterly heavy compositions.
They're named after American 1800's explorer Zebulon Pike, but to our ears Zebulon sounds like some sort of science fictional, metallic element found on the extreme edge of the periodic table. As in, "the asteriod is composed almost entirely of solid zebulon." Or, "this chunk of zebulon possesses strange radioactive properties!" So connoting something both heavy and, um, technically advanced. But the being named after the pioneer who lent his name also to Pike's Peak makes sense too, in that ZP's music is not unlike a craggy mountain range, full of peaks and valleys, tall granite spires and bottomless chasms. This is mountainous metal. Their riffs are of avalanche proportions, their long songs (three on this disc, the shortest a mere 10:55, the longest 16:25) move with the inexorable power of giant glaciers, having slow but majestic momentum, though they pick up speed now and then for a sudden rockslide or volcanic eruption. The vast heavens above and beyond those peaks are also visited by ZP, especially on track two, "Star-Ocean", dusted with spacey, Zombi-esque synths in an cosmic interlude at about the 10 minute mark.
It's a mystery to us why this band isn't better known. Why they're still putting out their records themselves on their own label, why they haven't gotten the sort of attention awarded bands like Baroness and Pelican and Mastodon and Om and Hammers... Why aren't they signed to Southern Lord or Hydra Head? Where's the limited picture disc vinyl and diehard boxsets and stuff? What about tours? But they're too good to stay our little secret forever! Anyone into metallic post-rock and/or stonery sludge ought to enjoy exposure to that Zebulon radiation we mentioned...
