Church of Misery at Myspace

Japan’s Church of Misery have offered up another solid album of groovy stoner doom metal  with Houses of the Unholy. The first thing that I should mention is that while this is a fine album, it’s not innovative by any stretch of the imagination, with the songwriting based firmly in the 1970′s. However, the Church do a great job within those confines. The band’s lyrics are all about serial killers, much like the band Macabre, but the similarities end there, as there’s little of Macabre’s grim humor in these lyrics. I have to commend vocalist Yoshiaki Negishi; he chooses to downplay his Japanese accent (not that I have anything against them), and does it extremely well; I never once would have suspected this band was Japanese if I listened to this release blind. His delivery is raspy without straying far from the style of 70′s metal vocalists.

The songs are frequently lengthy (five of the album’s eight cuts are more than seven and a half minutes long), so the grooves have plenty of room to breathe. The musicianship is fine but really takes a back seat to the hypnotic chord sequences; doom metal is more about the songwriting and riffs than technical skills. Fans of 70′s metal and hard rock would do well to check this out.

Giant Squid at Myspace

Giant Squid’s second album is similar in style to the first, with layers of keyboards and cellos supplementing the more traditional metal instruments, although they’re just that, supplements, rarely taking over completely. The album just oozes with atmosphere, both in the metallic sections and quieter passages, and the unusual instrumentation is a big factor. Both male and female vocals are utilized, and I greatly preferred the latter; there’s something about the male singer’s voice I find a bit irritating. When he sings high, his voice has an annoying nasally quality to it, and when he tries to sound gravelly, the result is just cheesy. This doesn’t come close to ruining the album, however. Most of the songs have subtitles which are the scientific names of sea life; I’m not sure what that fact is supposed to mean.

My favorite track on the album was one which stuck out as being atypical- “Throwing a Donner Party at Sea” isn’t a stereotypically slow doom metal song, as it clips along at a nice pace. I also liked the song’s use of harsh backing vocals, which is fairly unusual for this band. Another standout track was “Mormon Island;” I enjoyed its near-ambient use of the piano. If there’s one thing I didn’t like about this album, it’s that it lacks an extra-long track like the title track on Metridium Fields; I loved that song and its extremely repetitive but undeniably hypnotic groove. All in all, though, it’s a worthy second effort, and it’s well worth checking out.

Giant Squid at Myspace

I’ll be honest: The only reason I picked this album up was due to the band’s name (I love all things cephalopodic). So I was lucky when this album turned out to be awesome. Giant Squid’s Metridium Fields is an excellent effort; although it has its less than metal moments, an open-minded listener should find much to enjoy here. Both more traditional sludgy guitars and keyboards provide incredibly atmospheric drones that permeate the entire album. The keyboards are used exceptionally well, and a variety of types are used; the liner notes credit Aurielle Gregory with performing on a Moog Opus 3, Micromoog, piano, Rhodes, my personal favorite, the Hammond organ*, and several others.

My favorite track was the album’s titular song, a 21-minute epic soundscape. It’s repetitive, to be sure, but the band members keep making subtle changes in the riffs that reward close listening. I only have one complaint about this release: the vocals are terrible! I know that Giant Squid skirts the edges of being metal, but the vocals here sound like some of those faggy indie bands my sister listens to. I’m not demanding death growls, but I would’ve liked something with a little more punch. I still give Metridium Fields a high grade, though, and am disappointed that they lost their label support. As a result, their upcoming album, “The Ichthyologist,” will be limited to just 1000 self-released copies.

*Seriously, I think it’s been scientifically proven that it’s impossible for anything with a Hammond organ in it to suck. I have a record called “Freddy’s Greatest Hits” which was a tie-in to one of the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels. It’s about as awful as you’d expect, but there’s a cover of Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” with a Hammond organ on it that I just love.

Gnaw Their Tongues at Myspace

“An Epiphanic Vomiting of Blood” is a horrific album but in the best possible way. Mixing Doom Drone, Black Metal, Industrial, Noise and Ambient influences to make what is a very good contender for most disturbing album of the year. This Dutch one man project is often classed as Black Metal and whilst that is definitely an influence , especially with the sporadic vocals that description is definitely too limited to explain the deal with Gnaw Their Tongues.

Taking Sunn 0))) or Earth’s most depressing and primitive moments as a blueprints, Gnaw Their tongues add in harsh and aurally disfigured white noise, the aforementioned black metal vocals, an echoing malevolent string section, additional creepy keyboards, haunting slowly precise but organic drums and samples from various televised court cases, real crime TV shows and horror films to create what could be described as Jason Vorhee’s favourite chillout record.

Not that you could ever relax to this record with its claustrophobic oppressive ambience aided by the menacing strings that swirl in and out of aural focus like glimpses of something in the corner of your eye which seems to be always present but you can never quite focus on. The chilling verbal sample of a lawyer grilling a gentlemen who took it upon himself to tie up and murder a family one by one in “Teeth That Leer Like Open Graves” which what is presumably an extract from an American televised court case would creepy enough by itself but under a barrage of hypnotic low pitched guitar lines and some threatening electronic babbling its absolutely terrifying.

Along the way the album adds what appears to be a choir of witches, samples from a number station and what I think may be (it was a bit low in the mix to definitively ID) extracts from the “Wearside Jack” tape. This is the sound of human misery and depravity entwined in a sordid trawl through the dark side of popular culture. This is some fucked up shit my friends and although you won’t listen to it all the time, its worth it for the few times you do.

Dantesco at myspace

Dantesco, Puerto Rico’s premier metal band play a form of epic doom metal not a million miles from Doomsword, Solstice and Solitude Aeturnus. The first thing you will notice is they are all in Spanish and that vocalist Erico La Bestia sings for a good portion of the time in a cod-operatic style that somewhat distracts from the music. It’s hard to get into any sort of metal with someone sounding like Pavarotti singing over the top of it. The performance and composing of the music is top notch, but it’s impossible to get past a vocalist who by rights should be singing in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and it’s not coincidence that the bonus track on this album is actually taken from one!

The guitarwork is immensely soulful and provocative and with another vocalist I could probably get into this a lot more, but La Bestia’s vocals which when they aren’t operatic, sound like a parrot attempting falsetto, simply don’t work in Metal. Operatic vocals are for opera and nothing else really by the evidence of this record.