Conjurer - I

I asked to review this recently; jumping at the chance to do so (frankly, I'm just so happy to finally hear studio material by Conjurer). I can be quite wary of being asked to review things, or of bands that "farm out" reviews, because usually, if you have to ask for something to be written about, then it's going to be shite, but this is something incredibly special.  

Conjurer have been gigging maniacally for a while now, and I think it's safe to say this debut is hotly anticipated. We (Judas Cradle) shared a bill with these guys for our second ever gig, but we had to leave because some piece of shit power metal band were trying to fight us over broken equipment (the venue actually broke it, not us. Safe to say we never received an apology). Luckily the same tour came to my "local" a few days later, sans tubbo power metal, so I was able to actually watch these guys, and I still stand by the statement that Conjurer are the best band to have ever played that venue. Ever. They totally blew me away, and every other band off the bill (no offence intended, of course).

I is no different. 

Short version: Conjurer are fucking class. 

Long version: I simply floors the competition, and as far as decent debuts go, this is off the fucking chart. Conjurer have their own sound so it's hard to break them down into a string of dropped names to fill out a review (a staple of my writing style hahaha) but if I had to (and I will!) try and piece a picture together outta existing artists I'd say they are like some mad-scientist mix between Converge, Gojira and Neurosis, with a very Anathema-esque over-arching melodic edge; weeping guitar leads meeting crushing heaviness and droning doomery. Raspy, tortured back up vocals act as a foil to the gravel-throated roars of frontman Dan Nightingale.

Favourite track: The closing number, "Frail". All four tracks are beyond strong, but the way this brooding epic culminates never fails to rip my head off; those blasts just coming from fucking nowhere, and the riff is just perfect. It feels like all the misery and torment from every second of each tune previous to this has been building up to this final explosion. 

Listen and love! (FYI There are some awesome Conjurer t-shirt designs on the go at the moment, and this fucker just dropped on CD and vinyl thanks to Holy Roar.)

Pallbearer - Foundations Of Burden

You probably don't need me to tell you that the new Pallbearer record is heavy as fuck, but FYI - it's heavy as fuck. Doom metal is a grossly saturated scene these days, making stand-out records is becoming something of a challenge. I've personally given up on loads of underground doom because I literally just can't be fucked to sift through all the shit, which is a tragedy. When I took the chance with streaming the new Pallbearer though, the pitch-black candle of doom metal was re-lit inside my heart. Yeah.

The most interesting thing about Foundations Of Burden is not only the fact that it is much more upbeat that it's predecessor, it's the paradoxical balance of sounds that the band are producing here. Somehow, despite being crushingly heavy in every way a doom metal record should be, it is also progressively melodic and bright. Long tracks don't drag, they grow and progress naturally. Echoic guitar solos somehow do not sound out of place whilst shining over muddy doom chords. I sense a lot of diSEMBOWELMENT influence here, but with the clarity and skill to render aching melody simultaneously with modern doom stereotypes.

To round off, this is a monumentous doom record, living up to the sheer epicness that Pallbearer displayed on their last record. Out on Profound Lore Records. 

Ishmael - Hell Is Empty And All The Devils Are Here

I first experienced Ishmael many moons ago at Rainfest 2010 (AKA Bloodstock 2010) on the unsigned stage. I can't remember how we ended up watching them, perhaps it was because a large chunk of the crap on the mainstage was....well....crap. Anyhow, I was blown away by the sheer heaviness of this band; I did not expect such a sludgy and droney doom band to be playing Bloodstock, and I was proper chuffed to have caught them on a fluke. My mate Gumpy bought a CDr demo off them at the time, which I can't remember the name of, but I still have in the format of mp3. I recall the high-lariously titled song "Clit Snipper", which sounds just as nasty as it reads.

Roll on a few years then, and I'm now following Ishmael on Facebook. One day, I see they have released a tape, entitled Hell Is Empty And All The Devils Are Here, and I finally decide that it's high-time I actually bought something that this band have put out. And boy am I impressed! What a fuckin' sludgy tape! The production is shit hot, and the physical product as well has been professionally put together. That might not seem like much in itself but I'm normally used to getting DIY shit, so this tape looks extra impressive and shiny to me.

There are only three songs here, but they are fairly lengthy and make up a good total time between them. They are all, perhaps unsurprisingly, slower than an old man in slippers, and heavier than a wooden cart full of plague victims. Vocalist Dani Hawkins is particularly impressive; she is a veritable snarling beast, dispensing demonic-grade snarls, growls and roars alongside the brain-shaking doom metal.

If you like slow, sludgy, evil doom you need to get a load of this band! It's an absolute shame that they are now broken up but you can still listen to their stuff online. This tape was made by Breathe Plastic, and limited to 50 copies. I have number 6.

Godflesh - Pure

It's that time again; another Godflesh post! How long will this one be? How far up Justin Broadrick's arse can I get this time? Ha ha! All jokes aside, my love for Godflesh is seemingly never-ending, although I do have lapses in listening time these days as there is so much other stuff out there I'm currently wrapping my lugholes around. At the moment I've been on a tremendous (and possibly worrying) hip hop / Bjork kick, so switching back to something as punishing as early Godflesh for the purpose of this review has really juxtaposed my listening ability. I guess it makes Pure seem twenty thousand times heavier. That can only be a good thing.

I'm not sure if Pure was the logical progression from something as sprawling and nauseatingly epic as Streetcleaner. I can totally see how the band got from A to B, so to speak, but Godflesh could have just as easily wandered off into the wailing, droning, clanking territory instead. Regardless of what could have happened, history dictates that Godflesh tightened and disciplined their sound for their second record. Pure is clinical and more machine-like than before. Both Streetcleaner and Godflesh are mechanical as fuck, but they also both presented a harrowing sense of depth and that weird sense of claustrophobia (or is that agoraphobia?). Pure just gets in, fucks you up, and leaves. It is an absolute riff machine.

I'm surprised this isn't more popular in "regular" metal circles; the riffs on display here are tight and mosh pit inducing. If this record didn't exist, neither would Fear Factory (or maybe they would have just stayed as a death metal band). The production is something that is very similar to the later, metal-to-the-core Pantera, and I don't suppose that it's a coincidence that Justin ended up remixing on the "Walk" single. Even Metallica's Kirk Hammet claimed that Godflesh were the heaviest band on the planet, before he stole a bunch of artwork ideas and was a general all-round dick. To top it all off, Metallica went on to release Load and Reload at this point, so karma is a bitch.

 

This LP can be rather difficult to find at a decent price. If you keep scoping and peeping that shit on various websites you will eventually be very lucky and can score a copy for a pretty good price. I got mine for the absolute steal of £10, because the seller insisted that the copy wasn't in good shape, despite sending me pictures that seemed to show otherwise. My copy is a bit crackly, but that just lends to it's charm. It looks just like any well-played record would look like after 20 years of storage. Out on Earache Records, and has also been re-issued on CD a gazillion times so you can probably get a copy for 5p or something.

Cathedral - Endtyme

For me, Endtyme stands apart from anything else in the Cathedral discography. They have done dark before, sure, one needs not look further than the debut album to realize that, but that record is a whole other sack of decapitated witch heads. Here, Cathedral are chuggy and enormously groovy-heavy; and in a certain way take their groovy doom and smash it head on with the styles on display in the debut. Once I read somewhere  a quote that more-or-less said "Endtyme proves that Cathedral can still bang heads", and that pretty much sums it up.

 

"Melancholy Emperor" remained a Cathedral staple and ended up even on the Earache best of called The Serpent's Gold, "Whores to Oblivion" is catchy as shit, even featuring something that comes close to harsh noise at the end! Talk about variety! "Alcemist of Sorrow" is one of my favourite Cathedral songs, the opening lines of "I am Midas in reverse, my gold has turned to lead" are possibly the best example of Lee Dorrian's vocals ever (it's either that or "Huggy Bear? Oh yeah!"). Released a fuckload of time ago on Earache Records and strangely, this pressing was confined only to CD, which is very unusual for a band like Cathedral.

PS apologies for the frankly vomit-inducing scans; the Endtyme artwork is an absolute bitch to try and get a picture of because it's all so fucking shiny. 

Year Of No Light - Ausserwelt

I don't normally like post rock type stuff. Sure, I appreciate what the genre is all about, the sheer scope and beauty of it seems fantastic on paper, but for the most part I just can't see passed the whole twinkly-twinkly-becomes-epic-climax-in-7-11-minutes thing. Ugh. Build, bash, repeat. Wow, that's art, man. What I like about Year Of No Light however is that they retain the post rock epic and meld it with something more dark and haunting. There are overtones of doom metal galore, and an underlying sense of something altogether more film-scorey. Yes, I just wrote "scorey". It's how they say scary in Liverpool.

This record opens like a slow-motion, mega-HD punch to the face. Guy Ritchie is filming the fucker and after the initial burst you're left reeling backwards in all the sickening, gritty detail you could imagine. Possibly in sepia, too. Equal parts beauty and beast. I initially saw Year Of No Light live at Roadburn 2011 but didn't feel them, but I was attracted to check out this record on the cover art alone. That is how I used to suss out records when I was in my early teens, and it is still quite fun to just go for a record because it fucking looks awesome, although I gotta be honest I end up disappointed more often than not, but now and then a diamond like this will come along and make it all worth while. Bizarrely, I ended up picking up this record at the next Roadburn when Year Of No Light didn't have a set. Genius. Out on a variety of colours thanks to Music Fear Satan.