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.

Made in Japan is the third release from the Flower Travellin’ Band, and it’s just not as interesting as their first two efforts. Anywhere had some awesome cover songs, and Satori was wonderfully psychedelic, but the songwriting on here isn’t up to par with their previous release. There just isn’t anything on this release that seems especially groundbreaking for 1972. The songs are relatively short, so they don’t have the impressive lengthy grooves of those on Satori. The few highlights include the Pink Floyd-esque opening to “Hiroshima” and the wonderfully happy “Heaven and Hell.” This one’s only for completists.

The Flower Travellin’ Band released one more album called Make Up before they disbanded, but I couldn’t track down a copy, so I won’t be reviewing it.

Satori is the Flower Travellin’ Band’s most famous effort. The tracks are all named “Satori” parts I through V, but they really don’t sound that similar at all. Part I starts off with a tone reminiscent of the Emergency Broadcast System, and then vocalist Akira Yamanaka lets loose with a piercing scream. It’s amazing how heavy this stuff is for 1971. Part II is my favorite track on the album. The guitar melody is simply hypnotic and Eastern-sounding, the drums have a good mix of trippy cymbals and bass drum pounding, and there’s some great tambourine in the mix. Part III is an instrumental that takes a little while to get started, with some semi-ambient noise for the first 90 seconds, but it’s awesome once it does. The guitar work on this track is awesome; it’s fairly slow, but never plodding, but gets fast right towards the end. The fourth part is a little repetitive for the first third of its eleven minutes, but settles into an awesome, laid-back bluesy section with a harmonica that lasts until the final two minutes, when the song reverts to the first part again. The final track, Part V, has some awesome chanting from Yamanaka and some nice keyboard work, as well.

This is a great album, and I recommend it to anyone who loves Black Sabbath or other early metal bands.

Flower Travellin’ Band at Myspace

The Flower Travellin’ Band was one of the first bands that was heavily influenced by Black Sabbath, and who helped established the earliest form of doom metal. Despite that fact, they’re not well known today, which is a shame, because they’re quite good. They were originally a cover band with a female vocalist called the Flowers, but they retooled themselves as the Travellin’ Band after she left. They broke up in 1973, but reunited recently and recorded an album, “We Are Here,” which was released just last month in Japan. I have decided to celebrate this by reviewing their first three albums.

Aside from the minute-long harmonica opener “Anywhere,” all the songs on the first proper Flower Travellin’ Band release are covers. Things start off with a lengthy cover of Muddy Waters’ Louisiana Blues. While the musicianship on display is fine, at nearly sixteen minutes, the jamming goes on too long for its own good. Next up is a cover of Black Sabbath’s self-titled song from their self-titled debut. It lacks the atmospheric lightning, rain and church bells that were at the beginning, but it’s still pretty good; I especially liked vocalist Akira Yamanaka’s delivery of the “OH GOD NO!!!” line, although his pronunciation of the English lyrics is about as poor as you’d expect (as well as in all the other songs). This is followed by a rendition of the traditional song “House of the Rising Sun”; this has an intro that goes on for too long, and the sparse arrangment with just an acoustic guitar and drums makes the song’s eight minutes seem even longer. I felt this was the worst song on the album. The album closes with King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man.” I have to say I liked the original version better with its screeching saxophone, but the Travellin’ Band’s cover is still quite good.

It was clear that the Flower Travellin’ Band had talent, but they hadn’t quite found their niche yet. Their artistic breakthrough wouldn’t come until their follow-up, Satori, which consisted entirely of original compositions. This album is still a decent effort, though, and it’s historically important because it contains what must be some of the first Black Sabbath and King Crimson covers ever recorded.