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.
aQ pal Will turned us on to the amazing Wrnlrd (not really sure how you pronounce that), a Virginia based one man black metal band whose most recent disc, reviewed here a few lists back, totally hit the spot, with its furious fuzzed out and frenzied twisted blissy blackness. There is definitely a tendency these days for black metal bands to get all shoegaze-y and we're not complaining, we totally love that stuff, but a handful of bands are doingmore than that, taking that sort of spaced out blissiness and twisting it all around into something more unique, and darker and noisier. Which is precisely what Wrnlrd's Cperadt was all about. A nearly drumless wall of buzzing blackness that reminded us as much of Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz as much as Xasthur or Paysage D'Hiver.
So we were super psyched to explore the rest of Wrnlrd's catalog, starting with this one, In From The Night Herd, also from last year. The disc begins with some seriously creepy and harrowing black ambience, all haunting windswept whirs and distant moaning rumbles, ghostlike melodies drifting throughout, wraithlike and shimmery, the opening track, obviously the intro, so as track two begins, a twelve minute epic, the record shifts gears, and offers up still more thick cavernous drone. Weird, we were thinking, to have an intro after another intro, but then Wrnlrd is nothing if not weird. Then some gauzy skeletal guitars surface, offering up fragmented bits of melancholy melody, soon swallowed up by the roiling low end whirl below, haunting and creaking, almost industrial sounding. As the second track ends and the third begins, it suddenly dawns on us that this in fact an ambient disc, perhaps, since it was released around the same time, a companion to Cperadt. Which makes a whole lot more sense, and allows us to stop waiting for the inevitable black buzzing onslaught, and to enjoy the murky mysterious atmospheres on offer.
The third track, another long one, begins with chiming guitars, looped and minor key, eventually being joined by some deep glimmering reverberations in the background, the guitars gradually growing more and more distorted. Suddenly we're thinking maybe we were wrong, that in fact there is some black metal buzz here, but instead, the guitars continue to ring out, cycling through their melancholy mantra, very soothing and hypnotic, mesmerizing and trancelike, the background whirring and rumbling and eventually overtaking the forlorn guitar melody, leaving just deep smears of blurred blackness.
That blurred blackness bleeds into the brief final track, offering up a muted coda, the slow drifting sonic clouds barely obscuring tolling bells, and shards of mournful melody, soft smeared layers of disembodied guitars woven into a strangely beautiful black lullaby.
Maybe too abstract and dreamlike for the true grim throng, but perfect for anyone else into droning dark mystery and haunting otherworldy black ambience.
