REVIEW: RED NECKLACE - S/T

The last time I heard from Bill Robinson it was a pleasant message of appreciation for reviewing an album by his other band from Chattanooga, Oxxen. Now snarling and blasting out dangerous feedback with Red Necklace as well, Robinson and Patrick Wilkey - who provides drums and “hellfire,” according to Facebook - carve out four songs from forty minutes of thick riffage and thundering drums.

Starting with the glacial crawl of  “Repression of the Snake,” Red Necklace’s eponymous debut album fuses the swampy danger of Primitive Man and the bombastic noise of Behoover, then covers it all with a wintery mix of muddy slush and ice. It’s entirely possible that I’m projecting my own brutal New York February onto these songs, but they possess glacial qualities, in my frostbitten mind. When it comes to doom duos, there’s usually an enormous responsibility on the drummer to punctuate riffs that, without percussive accompaniment, risk feeling like distortion swelling and flickering as a freeform passage. Wilkey particularly shines on “The Swarm,” guiding the song down smoky corridors in some frigid basement labyrinth with confident fills while strengthening structural integrity.

But doom’s success is eventually determined by the mood and attitude of its riffs. Red Necklace grazes various subgenres (Sleep’s bouncy, bong-worshipping stoner doom; the texture of Evoken’s foggy, funereal epics; the grimy sludge of NOLA’s various musical outlaws), but emerges from the album with their own stamp on a genre, matching impressive kineticism with riffs that never feel derivative. The songs occasionally thaw during gentler moments of morose tones and shimmering cymbals, but it’s really just spilled blood momentarily melting the ice. Robinson’s rasp and blackened blues riffs transform 40 minutes into an experience that builds upon well-known metallic foundations (hell, parts of “Repression of the Snake” even feel like “Enter Sandman” at times, if the Sandman was dressed in fresh pelts) and stomps forward with a black boot.

Check out Red Necklace over on their Facebook page, then pre-order their album over on Bandcamp: http://rednecklace.bandcamp.com/

Better yet, order the cassette from Failed Recordings and Inherent Records here: http://failedrecordings.storenvy.com/products/5439073-red-necklace-s-t-cassette

REVIEW: SERVANTS OF THE MIST - SUICIDE SEX PACT

Tampa, FL may not seem like the doom capital of the world, with their sunshine and delicious oranges and all that, but then a band like Servants of the Mist comes along with Suicide Sex Pact, an EP so bleak and filthy that it blocks the light traveling from dying stars and rots fruit from the trees.

From the opening uneasy clean singing of a passage from “Jesus Loves Me,” which captures the same creepy melancholia as Harvey Milk’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s “One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong,” Servants of the Mist create a world where light is long-extinct and hope’s been violently snuffed. Album opener “Absence” introduces their scorched funeral doom, which sounds like the aural equivalent of finger painting with urn ash on a canvas of stretched skin torn from a dead priest’s back. This sort of pitch-black doom inspires thoughts of Bongripper and Cough, mixed with the drama of early My Dying Bride.

“Behind the Curtain” continues the band’s glacial determination with uncompromising heaviness. I wasn’t able to truly conceive of canyons being carved by icy structures until I heard the riff in this song. It feels a little like Evoken, if their songs were trapped in endless hallucinogen-fueled night terrors. The lead guitar in this song and album closer “Suicide Sex Pact” didn’t feel totally committed, with wavering hints of bluesy groove that fizzle instead of sizzle. This is the only aspect of the latter two songs that make me question if they totally earn the song length (none of the songs are briefer than 9 minutes). Fortunately, I’m willing to forgive 2 minutes among 30 when the rest of the album features guitar fuzz thicker than a blanket used to smother plague victims in their sleep. Richard Smyth Jr.’s vocals could scrape muscle from bone like an autopsy instrument, with curdling shrieks and meaty growls that give way to a no-wave gothic chant about 25 minutes into the album for a brief reprieve from ferocity. The breakdown of slow motion death rock slams back into relentless tomb-smashing doom before the feedback lifts like smoke and dust, revealing a pile of lifeless nude bodies.

With audio collage work reminiscent of Eyehategod’s more experimental passages and a muscular, bass-heavy attack that invokes Primitive Man and Conan, Suicide Sex Pact should interest fans of the loud, mean, and ugly. Maybe those aren’t adjectives I’d use on a dating profile, but when it comes to extreme metal, that’s love at first sight.

Go check out Servants of the Mist on Facebook and follow their updates as release information surfaces for Suicide Sex Pact:  https://www.facebook.com/servantsofthemist

Check out a preview of the title track over here: https://soundcloud.com/hbnbm/servants-of-the-mist-suicide

GUEST REVIEW: EVOKEN - A CARESS OF THE VOID

Editor: So this is the first guest review from a non-metal fan, an occurrence I hope to make a bi-weekly staple. One of the reasons I created this site was to share heavy metal with a wider, reluctant (or maybe even suspicious) audience. I could have easily assigned a more approachable record (think: Baroness, Anciients, Mastodon), but our first guest writer encouraged me to give him something challenging and relentless. Jude Gullie is a corporate stooge, medicine man, John Candy connoisseur, and extremely talented chef. He was a vital part of the now-defunct folk crooners The Holy Crows and was one-third of the vaudevillian performance team The Broken Banjo Boys. Here is Jude’s take on A Caress of the Void, the latest album from New Jersey funeral doomsters Evoken. - MG

GUEST REVIEWER: JUDE GULLIE

When I heard that Mr. Growl wanted non-Metal fans to review albums for his blog I jumped at the opportunity.  I had been wanting to listen to some Metal ever since I had the pleasure of watching a gentleman (who was listening to what I believe was metal) violently air-drumming next to me on the L train.  Why should that guy be having all the fun?  

My first assignment was to review the “Funeral Doom” band Evoken’s A Caress of the Void.  I had never heard of “Funeral Doom” prior to this experience, but I will say that it piqued my interest.  If I have ever talked with you more than a few minutes you would probably know that I have a morbid fascination with the character of Pallbearer from 1980s and 1990s WWF fame. (Editor’s Note: R.I.P - MG) I was really hoping that the music might invoke images of that fat man with white caked on makeup holding an urn.  I was sorely mistaken.

I don’t know if it gets easier to understand this kind of music if you listen to it often, but I spent the majority of this album (all the parts with vocals) with my hand to my ear like an elderly man trying to listen to the soup specials being listed at a Friendly’s Restaurant.  I could understand words like “me” and I think I heard the phrase “delicious skittles” at one point, but I wouldn’t put money on my being correct.

The more I listened to the album the more the mental image of the lead singer burping into a microphone while trying to form words popped into my head.  That is how this type of music is made, right?

By around the fifth song “Descend the Lifeless Womb” I felt like I was in the groove of listening to the album, but the next song was thirteen minutes long!  I found myself getting distracted and watching an “Easter Toys” ad on the side of the Grooveshark website. I did end up listening to the whole album, but I would say that I was not swayed to start listening to more metal.

Editor: NOOOOO! We were one 13 minute doom opus away from claiming the soul of another non-metal fan! Here’s hoping Jude will sign on for another review in the future. Maybe a grindcore album with 15 songs in 13 minutes is more his (hyper)speed? Thanks again to Jude for participating and being a good sport. Next time we will capture your soul and keep it in Paul Bearer’s urn for eternity.

Form your own opinion by finding Evoken on Spotify and learn more about them at their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/evokendoom