REVIEW: DEUIL - ACCEPTANCE/REBUILD

I’m not sure what the opening chanting means, but it’s the perfect chilling start to this massively heavy, compelling, occasionally terrifying, but ultimately uplifting release from the Liège, Belgium doom crew Deuil. I’m quite proud to say that my seven years of French classes paid off and I actually knew this band’s name translated to “mourning” before reading it in their bio, and their sound is absolutely fit for a post-funeral meltdown and subsequent recovery.

Acceptance/Rebuild is a sprawling two-track assault on the senses that builds from the aforementioned moaning/chanting to droning sludge that hypnotizes its prey into submission before tearing out its jugular. “Acceptance” drifts into a nebula of fuzzy feedback and star dust before plummeting back to Earth with an unexpectedly uplifting blast of noisy black metal. It’s a song that toys with dynamics and is in constant motion, not settling for the glacial crawl of run-of-the-mill doom. The seventeen minutes feel like an emotional expedition, with tension and release expertly utilized to invoke conflict, obstacles, triumph, failure, and despite it all, hope.

“Rebuild” commences again with mysterious chanting and harsher feedback and easing into chiming, haunting melodies against a droning wall of sound like the hum of an industrial metropolis. The drum blasts in this song feel a little more forced as the rest of the music doesn’t swell and build as much as it minorly changes direction, like a new bird taking lead as a flock heads south. The last 2 minutes pound the ground with a huge doom riff that accounts for the most traditionally heavy moments of the album. Still, there’s a sense of at least bittersweet hope in this album that isn’t found on most releases exploring the dark space between doom and atmospheric black metal, let alone one named after the grieving process.

While the hoarse vocals don’t add much to the music besides an intonation of anger, the drumming is excellently executed and the band creates a world that is vast and layered with mystery and complex emotional resonance. This is a fantastic debut album that joins titans like Lesbian, Tree of Sores, and Usnea; all bands who’ve elevated the songcraft of long-form doom-oriented music into something even more challenging, exciting, and diverse. Despite their name, I promise you will not mourn the 27 minutes spent listening to this album.

Listen to Acceptance/Rebuild over on Bandcamp now, available as a “name your price” download from Lost Pilgrim Records: http://lostpilgrimsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/acceptance-rebuild

And follow them on Facebook for updates on their vinyl and casette releases:  https://www.facebook.com/wearedeuil

REVIEW: TRAPPED WITHIN BURNING MACHINERY - THE PUTRID STENCH OF DECAYING SELF

Okay, so the band name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, and I was mostly expecting some harsh industrial music, just because I’m a dope and the word “Machinery” is in it. If someone played this album for me and asked me to guess a band name based on the music I would blurt out, “Rotting Lamentation.” As you can see, there’s a reason nobody comes to me to name bands anymore. My last suggestion was Nuncuddle.

Trapped Within Burning Machinery play dense, somber music that incorporates equal parts blackened doom, trudging death, and the most sluggish sludge. Honestly, I didn’t expect so much melody and so many gentle moments from an album with both “stench” and “decaying” in the title. As you can see, I judge books by their covers like it’s my god damn job, because it occasionally is. This is one instance where the element of surprise was very appreciated by this dreary reviewer. I’m not sure if they have bogs in Moreno Valley, CA, but this music feels like it rose from the muck of a long-forgotten cemetery that sunk into swamplands long ago, and these songs are the spirits clawing their way through the moss and algae. It’s powerful stuff, in turns heavy and harmonious, all driven by an enormous wall of darkened guitar fuzz and the strangled, chilling scream of Zak Esparza.

“Parasitic Mind Decomposition” actually alarmed me a bit, as I had a friend overcome brain surgery following an infestation of pork parasites in his brain. It’s one of those insane ultra-metal moments that thankfully had the happiest ending possible with his recovery, and now finally (thanks to this band) has an official soundtrack. “Smoldering Enclave” features thick, meaty riffs that remind me of Pungent Stench’s best work on For God Your Soul, For Me Your Flesh before quieting the assault to a whisper during a disarmingly soft interlude. “Industrial Snuff,” besides being an awesome title that Shin'ya Tsukamoto should totally steal for another Tetsuo film, was my favorite track on the album. It grooves like Eyehategod’s bluesy sludge but if you pick the crusty scab there’s still the black blood beneath and the core of tortured doom. Still, there are moments of light on this album and it’s a fully textured emotional experience. The music may sound like it’s from some godless swamp filled with the bones of massacred families, but it’s also surrounded by lovely apple blossoms, if you make it out of the swamp alive.

There are a few passages that didn’t fully engage me (“Plague of Aeon’s” and “Violent Veins” both tested my patience at times), but The Putrid Stench of Decaying Self is still a tremendous album. If you like earthy doom like Usnea that can block out the sun and cover the world with darkness this is most certainly for you. Just leave yourself a breadcrumb trail if you venture into this bog, you may not make it out again to offer more crappy band name suggestions like I did.

Listen to The Putrid Stench of Decaying Self over on Bandcamp, available for download and CD purchase for a modest $5:  http://trappedwithinburningmachinery.bandcamp.com

And follow them on Facebook, where I learned they are headed to the studio to make more music to hurt our feelings:  https://www.facebook.com/trappedwithinburningmachinery

Also, hat tip to my friend Ellie for pointing me towards this album. She makes beautiful metal vests and could probably sell them for $500 each if any rich kids wanna go see Coffinworm and look troo. I hope to showcase her art on here at some point, she’s vastly talented and recently had a (temporary) Iron Lung tattoo across her knuckles. Bad ass.

REVIEW: USNEA - S/T

For those of you unfamiliar with lichens and herbal medicine, usnea is an algae/fungus also known as “Old Man’s Beard” that grows on a vast number of trees in the Pacific northwest. It’s also a natural immune system tonic safe for pets and children. I can not say the same about Usnea’s music. This is savage music with enormous depth that would use pets and children as bear bait.

Usnea released their self-titled debut in Portland, OR on local DIY label Orca Wolf Records this past January. I’m convinced after a few listens that hearing it now, in the second week of March, is the perfect timing. This album, composed of four ten-plus minute tracks, feels like a bog thawing as winter passes, where the nights are still long and dark but the creeks start to gurgle beneath the snow. I hesitate to call this music “funeral doom” because to me it feels like something dangerous waking after hibernation, coming to life instead of crawling into a casket.

Opening song “Chaoskampf” offers a microcosm of Usnea’s dark, tangled world. From the chilling, plodding riffs clawing up the muck to the strikes of black metal lightning, there is a dense, deadly landscape that Usnea takes their time cultivating. “Brazen Bull of Phalaris” leads you down a different animal-tracked path through similar terrain. Whatever animal left the tracks is horned, bloodthirsty, can sense the fear in the tremors of every footstep, and probably sleeps beneath an Usnea band member’s porch. Beginning with hissing feedback and ending with fragile, clean guitar, the band’s stringed instruments explore every monstrous possibility in between. The vocals are similarly varied, from a somber bellow to a mid-range shriek that could split a sycamore in half.

While the introductory riff on “Monuments to Avarice” kept me engaged as it offered sunlight breaking through the clouds, even while Joel Williams’ howls and bass thunder in the background, the rest of the track did test my interest. My mind wandered a bit as the song started to feel its length, hoping for a few lighter brush strokes on the sable canvas. Usnea stole me back as soon as the mid-tempo (up-tempo, compared to the rest of the album) stomp of “Empirical Evidence of a Deranged God” splashed me with black pond scum head-to-toe and left me smiling through the grime. It’s a triumphant closing for a magnificently crushing debut album. Honestly, even mentioning it’s a debut album feels like a qualifying phrase. This is a  focused, grim, and truly great record, regardless of where it sits chronologically in a discography.

I will be following Usnea from this release forward, hoping for future gigs on the East Coast and guiding other musical marsh-dwellers into Usnea’s haunted swamp. If you play this album in an abandoned shack tucked in the belly of some secluded, wooded mudlands you can be sure the restless spirit of some old curse-casting hermit will be stirred. This music unlocked my macabre imagination and let it run wildly between the notes. While “Old Man’s Beard” is a name begging to be used somewhere in the metal world, Usnea is the name we should all remember (and learn how to pronounce) going forward.

Listen to Usnea’s album NOW, streaming for free and available for download for only $4 at:  http://usneadoom.bandcamp.com/

Or better yet, buy the beautiful vinyl LP for $10 over at Orca Wolf Records: www.orcawolf.com

And check out their Facebook page for more information at:  https://www.facebook.com/usneadoom