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

REVIEW: PRIMITIVE MAN - SCORN

While “man” be in the name of recent Relapse-signee Primitive Man, this music sounds like it was created by a malevolent force of nature, not just mortals with a mean streak. With members from Clinging To The Trees of A Forest Fire and Reproacher, this Denver, CO outfit have the credentials and gut-churning aggression to turn heads and cave skulls in the extreme metal community until the world cracks beneath the power of Jonathan Campos’ bass. The suffocating doom of Scorn, their first full-length set to be re-released by Relapse in August, sounds like the roar of all the earth’s mud and crude oil bubbling with rage, prepared to swallow us whole.

This album is one of the most unpleasant and downright frightening listening experiences of the year, crawling forward like an ancient beast pressing its muzzle to the ground to scavenge fields of bones and pooled blood. Opening with the album’s namesake, “Scorn” launches into tortured sludge that salivates on the border of funeral doom, invoking the misanthropy of Bongripper and the sluggish menace of Oak. While there’s definitely a monochromatic element to some of their pieces, like in “Antietam” and “Rags,” the album still mines the full spectrum of sound for texture. From jangly dissonance (“Scorn”) to challenging sound collages and atmospheric creepiness (“I Can’t Forget” and “Black Smoke”) and uptempo bursts of crust (“Stretched Thin” and “Astral Sleep”), Primitive Man possess a lot of knowledge about what nightmares are made of, and how to haunt you with them.

While doom bands often live and die by the enormity of their riffs, the strong drumming of Isidro Soto and Ethan Lee McCarthy’s hope-shredding vocals truly propel Scorn to full momentum. McCarthy sounds like the raspy snarl of that previously mentioned scavenging beast, broadcast through the thick static of a ham radio. Primitive Man may not write especially memorable songs when examined individually, but the album creates a dense, unforgettable experience that feels like you’re drowning in prehistoric tar pits, flanked by the preserved carcasses of mammoths and cavemen alike. Scorn is intense, primal, and would tunnel through the earth just to watch it implode on itself.

As mentioned before, parts of this album certainly plod and if you’re an impatient listener you may not fully appreciate the vastness of Scorn’s bleak sound, but if you’re a fan of slow-burn doom titans like Sunn O))) and Ufomammut and don’t mind a chaser of cold black bile, Primitive Man is ready to rip your day in half and fill it with riffs that could scrape the skin and religion off a dying priest.

Relapse releases Scorn on August 20th, and Primitive Man is currently touring  Go to their official website here for tour dates and merch:  http://primitivemandoom.com/

And check them out on Facebook to stay current with all band-related news:  https://www.facebook.com/primitivemandoom