Genre : Sludge
Label : Peaceville
Origin : United Kingdom
Rating : 8.0 / 10
Buy it now
My Dying Bride is here to mangle down both your cautious and your comfortable concepts of oh!, so real reality with sludge-rampant unlimited, and, also take heed and bear witness to the superb cover-art that is summing up the horrifying vibe this release seeks to communicate along. For a sake of the moment and the metaphor, imagine how you would feel if to encounter this fucking demonic beast of a living being under this terribly killing moon, and, once you have the vibe, then the best you could and should do, is to hop on this spin and give the middle finger to your expectations while at that. This is acceptable as a plan, but you and I both know that secretly we both anticipate a traditional vibe of sludge, and deeply traditional sludge it is indeed, with down-tuned, - oh really. - tormented instruments seeking to address and spout myriad form of myriad miseries.
There is a quite convincingly sick and sLick sludge record called Guilty by a band called Indian, and this release is quite peaceful, compared to the constant living-through of death - wow! - the Guilty record shows interest in. For the most part. Luckily enough, and, for what I personally like quite enthusiastically about this release, this EP has no desire to serve out any ONE particular spiritual craving of yours. If you are here to shed a tear, you will have ample chances to do so, but, don't be surprised if this EP picks your crying spirit up and kicks its ass to hell and back. The album contains a single, monumental track weighing in at 27:04, and this amount of time gives it all the opportunities in the whole wide world to do with you whatever it wants to. As such : read on to find out how this track is going to waste you.
The EP starts out with one minute of atmospheric ambient, and, after 60 seconds, when you would start to whine like a little bitch about how you not signed up for an atmospheric experience of atmospheric graveyard wind and whatnot, the Lurking Sludge, as if it would be aware of your intent to start to whine, emerges in front of you and puts a ball of mud into your open mouth, (as a start) which is a humbling experience for sure.
The first 6 minutes of the album is a peaceful - in sludge terms, that is - introductory sequence with restrained-, but properly present and soulful singing - not on the LaBrie comfort me, please? register, thank God & Co. - and quite efficient-, also quite eerie violin playing. Do not be afraid : being primordially eerie is NOT an intent of this release, fortufuckinglutely. As hinted already, its primordial intent is to waste you, and it knows that the eerie factor wears out super quickly until a shapeshifter or a banshee moves in to rip out your heart.
From 6:30, a relentless, monumental rumble emerges as Ultimate Abomination Cthulhu would be on the drums with his buttbuddy Yog Sothoth on the bass and their favorite "gimp" Abdul Alhazred with a guitar and the mic as fronter. Erich Zahn on the violin. Hell, yes! My all-time favorite sludge line-up to be honest, and I'm pretty sure that it is yours, too. The singing, while this rumbling operational mode is engaged, takes the character of the narrative-, calm melodic style Peter Steele likes to utilize. Even better : the singer does not seek to imitate Peter Steele's Demigodian Deeps.
The intensity quickly changes its form back to more freely positioned sludge-splashing. A nice riff shows its pretty, but sad face around in an elegant loop, with tamely tormented, but, fortunately, still dignified and likable singing. This verse structure is colored by a short guitar solo, then, an even more relevant, inventively and deceivingly evil riff comes in to park its hideous foot on the remnants of your favorite hopes, hahaha. This structure reaches an interlude with warm, clean guitars fading in then out, giving place for not too stunning, sorrowful solo guitar molestation with howling wind in the background. In my opinion, this introductory sequence of this sub-sequence from 15:00, sounds like the guitarist is out looking for a riff that is on the run from him. A second solo guitar comes in after a while to lead a helping harmonic walk stick. By the time the singer joins in, the guitars indeed are riding on an efficient, restrained, kind of elegantly shy and humble build. From 19:30, the band starts to have the Yob going on : this here is the vibe Your Angry God Who Finds Exquisite Pleasure Smithing Thee is riding on : the singing here becomes spiritually tormented AND authentic at that, while the guitars are finding the sonic places in the fabric of mere music that cause anti-comfort on purpose. And they do not even go for the tritone, A.K.A. the Note of the Devil. Here is a song with a keen fixation on the tritone.
With great satisfaction I behold, that, from the 22:00 mark, My Dying Bride breaks through a door - a fortunate turn of events that the sentence does not end here - the Yob dudes did not really took interest in in their latest release of similar character. At the end section of this 27 minute epic, My Dying Bride brings you sludge-intensity that relentlessly sucks into itself the spirit of death metal, finding a place later on to introduce evil sacrificial drumming that Satan himself probably would give the Approved! on. No, he did not object. No tam and bass drum in the house remains in safety, every single one of them receives full capacity engagement, and the resultant sonic experience is absolutely magical. On the darker spectrum of things, of course. This tribal-, sacrificial megavibe fills the track out proper via the end sequence, and only an atmospheric outro is left to shake a hand with - make sure you get it back - before this elegant soulcrusher EP completes the first spin you deserve. It also is worth mentioning that the release is capable to produce a relentlessly monumental and precisely sculpted sonic presence without effected toy-wizardry, and this right here is the trademark of an output that demands your immediate attention. A DAMNED decent sludge contribution.
Rating : 8.0 / 10
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