Wormphlegm - Tomb of the Ancient King

(Painiac Records, 2006)

If the slow, cold crawl of death-plated doom bores you, move on. Wormphlegm don’t make nuanced prog-blessed neo-black tech-jazz proto-folk metal, or whatever it is the hippies want to hear these days. Tomb of the Ancient King delivers a precise realization of its title, assuming that said tomb is an unlit, cathedral-sized cavern and that ancient king is a pissed-off Balrog flanked by shrieking, rotting terrors, and is seriously not dead.

The dark, one-note pounding on a piano key sets the stage for Tomb’s first half-hour (all one track). As razor chords tear through the shadows, they are paired with a trebly melody that stretches like Romero zombie flesh being ripped from the bone. The vocals also travel in pairs: piercing ghost howls dart always in the high chambers above the rumbling, unintelligible yeti roars. The gore-drenched din mostly follows unsurprising (though not unchanging) paths, with rhythms and riffs speeding up and turning left once in a while but never really finding their way deeper or closer to the edge of the song’s light-starved labyrinth. The monochrome production sets this work apart from these Finns' synth-stained other doom band, Tyranny (also worth checking out, though somewhat less engaging than Tomb).

After thirty minutes of “Epejumalat monet tesse muinen palveltin caucan ja lesse,” the title track and closer “Return of the Ice Age and the Tortyrant” seem bite-sized in comparison, at only 13 minutes and 17 ½ minutes respectively. They don’t stray far from the blueprint laid out in the first track, but mash similar ideas into new forms. Drum patterns in “Tomb of the Ancient King” become more varied and evocative, helping the band sound more like they’re playing a song rather than exploring a haunted mine. At one point, the torturous bellowing drops closer to Gozer snarls. “Return” distends and shrivels over its runtime with bent, decaying chords and wobbly rhythmic heaving. The track eventually gives out, with the album not so much finishing as exhausting itself after an hour of unrelenting punishment.

With all the variations on bleak doom cropping up in 21st century metal, some will say that Tomb is beating a dead horse. But when so much stinking, gleaming viscera erupts from an animal when it is beaten thus, I, and Wormphlegm, say: Why not?

Encoffination - Ritual Ascension Beyond Flesh

(Selfmadegod Records, 2010)

The Christians will tell you that faith in the Savior is sufficient to gain the reward of Heaven. Trust in the redeeming power of Jesus, they say, and He will save you from humanity’s default destiny: damnation. Well, most will say that. The Catholics seem to think a person should go out among the suffering and do good deeds, as well, instead of just grinningly gripping the robe-tails of the righteously bearded one. Leave it to those incense-huffing Pope-worshippers to turn God into some kind of force for good and human progress. And so the debate rages, probably until the Christ returns or the aging sun engulfs our planet and makes the whole conversation moot.

The question for Encoffination is similar: Is the triune dedication of faith, hope, and love for Disembowelment’s early 90's output enough to usher Ritual Ascension Beyond Flesh into the canon of metal rituals worth your time, soul, and shelf space? YES. Oh, sweet sepulcher, yes; if there are any Protestant equivalents in the Satanist camp, they’re right about this one. First of all, at only a couple EPs and a full-length, Disembowelment’s back cat wasn’t deep enough anyway. Second and most importantly, Ascension’s shifting rhythms and grotesque chord progressions grab your attention and never let go.

Encoffination keep all the buzzing riffs, cavernous vocals, and mid-to-lumbering drum crashes intact and shroud everything with a muted, distant production that heightens the atmosphere and allows for impressively loud listening without ruining the ears. The songs never settle into one mode for too long, but lurch often from grimy crawl to wicked gallop to something uncomfortably in between. The song lengths also aid listenability, with every track (excepting the slightly longer “Coffinpsalms”) wrapping in under six minutes. Less likely to be granted patience are the creepy film samples that tend to bookend the songs; they might have worked if their use was less predictable, but mostly they become tiresome by mid-album.

The pair of interlude tracks (“Procession” and… um, “Interlude”) and tuneless, Asunder-like singing in the final minute of the album prove these guys carry more up their sleeves than the one trick on display through most of Ascension. Heck, they also got together this year as Father Befouled for a more aggressive and equally filthy death metal album. Yeah, that one’s pretty great, too. The time for debating the band’s worthiness is over. For now, and forever, just listen.

Exist - In Mirrors EP

(self-released, 2010)

One of the highest compliments one can pay a young band is that comparisons don’t come easy. Sure, Exist highlight Meshuggah, Cynic, Tool, and King Crimson among their array of influences, and any informed listener can tease out those jazz-inflected prog-death elements without help. But from these influences, Exist build a distinctly personal identity, as any band worth some amp wattage should.

“Writhe” roars in with staccato riffs and aggressive, octopus-armed drum patterns. Singers Max and Weber have that rare discernible growl, all the more important because the transcendental lyrics speak to the core of the band’s musical vision. At the halfway point, the band trades in their swirling fever for a deep, mounting groove and a clean and curly guitar solo. This entirely instrumental section builds back toward earlier intensity but doesn’t quite reach it, setting the stage instead for the 3-part title track.

While there are few moments of real tension on the EP, “In Mirrors” contains all of them, beginning with a bassy rumble and a few instrumental teases before the head-nodding beat drops. Part One, “The Pine,” is dominated by spare guitar leads and relaxed, slightly anemic clean vocals; the listener has to wait for grander moments in Part Two for Max’s voice to swell to its powerful potential. When the second verse ends and the bass and guitar stake out their territories with driving beat and distorted Chewbacca moans respectively, the nod deepens toward serious half-bang. The whispered vocals throughout the song work perfectly – they are a harsh, chilling, and barely human touch added to the destruction wrought all around them. In fact, the growl-to-whisper switch at the 5:35 mark is hands-down my favorite moment here. “So We Are…” settles into a dreamy, synth-painted landscape where the guitar solo can wander slowly before attaching itself to a burly bass and drum attack. Final section “Equilibrium” gathers all the proggy promise of earlier moments and wraps them into a package of inventive guitar and bass solos, both chiming and melodic, before the whole piece finally quiets and comes to rest.

Certainly, some of the soloing tests this listener’s patience, and not all of the vocal choices are as engaging as they might be, but the band gets considerable points because this shit sounds so good. Far from the “intentional” murk so many unsigned bands labor under, Exist benefit from a mix where everything can be heard and all parts weave a focused and horns-worthy whole.

Stopgap Release II

This afternoon, while my daughter napped and my son spent some time with his grandmother, I listened to Blood of the Black Owl's A Feral Spirit and reread Decibel's May 2010 Burzum article. BotBO is amazing! J. Bennett is amazing! The witching-hour ice storm that kept me out of a full day of pointless meetings is amazing!

Then I listened to Alcest's Ecailles de Lune and read a Dillinger Escape Plan article from the same magazine issue. Both were slightly less extreme and amazing (but only slightly). Hooray for back issues and a short memory.

While Heaven Wept - Vast Oceans Lachrymose

(Cruz del Sur, 2009)

Books and their covers be damned! Witness how the expectations build: the band name suggests a slow sorrow so deep that an infinite plane of grace-endowed souls can’t hold back the tears; the album title evokes a globe-cracking rumble that should cause the forces of nature to wail and gnash their immaterial teeth; and the first track is sixteen goddamn minutes long! The soul-threatening growl and ultra-bassy reverb should be tingling my fingers before I can even get the last shred of cellophane off the jewel case.

But this is not doom. Is it prog metal? (Urgk…) Power metal? That long opener, “The Furthest Shore,” gallops in with a whole lot more energy than expected, and it only takes a few seconds to realize that the guitar tones are all wrong for the anticipated vibe. Still, it’s a promising, fist-pumping workout, even with the subtle keyboard mood enhancers. But after about 75 seconds, the song finally gives itself away with a triumphant clean guitar melody that leads right into a starry-eyed acoustic section. All of which, to these ears, could have been set right with a frontman’s (or woman’s) burly roar, blackened rasp, or even Dubin-esque screech (ok, maybe not that). The rock operatic vibrato that does join the fray, however, only clarifies this band’s intent to launch a pillar of light into that angel-filled city, dry those eyes and slap some victorious grins on those faces. Vocalist Rain Irving babbles something about being carried to his “watery grave,” but I don’t think he actually plans to go.

Subverted expectations, though, are hardly an appropriate basis for determining quality. The instrumental prowess on this release is evident, and if extreme climbers required riffs instead of oxygen, these guys would play every show atop Everest. Trevor Schrotz's percussion rarely drops below freight train speed, and then only for self-consciously pretty moments. Riding these muscular musical shoulders are effective (though hardly original) vocal melodies, occasionally attended by the obvious amount of choral oohs and aahs. On “Vessel,” Irving actually croons, “Tonight, will you sail away?” as if such a thing had never been crooned before. And the sporadic keyboard runs take me back to a time when… no, no I never listened to shit like this.

And I probably won’t ever again.

Stopgap Release I

Having found out yesterday that Evoken and Burzum are set to release new darkness into the world in the coming months, I took some time yesterday to listen to The Antithesis of Light and Belus. Solid work, both of them. I'll probably put myself through more Evoken this weekend. If the world's gonna end soon, I want it to sound like that.

More words about sounds when I have the time and inspiration. Embrace the emptiness until the light takes us.

John Zorn - Ipsissimus

(Tzadik, 2010)

My five-year-old son loves “Book of Los,” the second track off Tzadik’s latest Moonchild collaboration. I could lie and say it was for Marc Ribot’s lush guitar lead, the mid-song choral touches, Zorn’s cautious piano contributions, or even the blazing instrumental virtuoso second half. It’s not. My boy lights up when Mike Patton’s Fudd-in-an-electric-chair gibbering rips across the song’s ritual jazz-rock landscape. It’s perhaps not the best reason to be excited about occult improv, but it could be worse. He could prefer Bieber.

After four other recordings with similar focus, one might expect further work to be a stale retread, but on Ipsissimus, Zorn and company are still finding new ways to evolve their sound. Patton has injected lighter whispers and tonal singing into his performance, and Zorn’s sax rage in opener “Seven Sigils” also yields to smoother granddad-pleasing runs. Trevor Dunn’s bass growls in places, bubbles in others, sometimes laying foundation but just as often scratching out Masada-like melodies (as in “The Changeling”) that have been creeping into this music since Moonchild’s last outing, The Crucible. Joey Baron, likewise, is more than rhythm keeper; his drums sketch impish patterns around the others’ equally cheeky efforts. Further sonic surprises can be found in the chiming intro and tropical beach-to-beast transformations of “Warlock,” and in the guitar solos exhumed from some alternate universe’s Southern rock tradition in “Supplicant.”

Maybe it’s not so strange that, amidst all the bold magickal questing undertaken by these brave musicians, it’s Patton’s human voice, screwball utterances and all, that I find most memorable. Maybe there’s a giggling five-year-old in all of us.