It is thy eve of Halloween and I sit here with a disc before me with witches cavorting on the front cover and a baphomet design around some sinister looking band players on the back. What form of horror could the music here conjure from the depths of its diseased and dreadful soul? Well actually this is black magick with a sense of fun about it and it is exorcised within a firm flare shuffling stoner framework. I encountered these Texans before when they presented me their ‘Mission & MMIX-MMXI’ releases on 12 Vinyl and CD respectively and at the time stated that they had “the scope to raise any comatose zombie from the grave”. Therefore I was rather pleased when their debut full length album arrived allowing me to get into them that bit more.
After some spooky organ work introduces us to the ‘Funeral Queen’ and goes all trippy and warped out we quickly flow into the ‘Path Of Doom’ with some walloping hefty riffs and solid drums. We find ourselves quickly transfixed and be-warlocked by the rich and charismatic voice of singer Gregg Higgins. His delivery and tone is commanding, flamboyant and theatrical once it gets going and the instrumentation is full of chugging refrains and stomp heavy rhythms. It has a real retro feel to it and the repetitive chorus is quick to bounce around in your head. Venomous Maximus are also one of those bands that are original enough not to have me citing stacks of other group’s names during the review; this may make my task that bit more difficult but it is all in their favour. I did also mention with the old tracks that ‘Give Up The Witch’ could well be their anthem and they must think so too as it has been included here again. It really is a number with plenty going for it and has a chorus which is a real fire starter and a head banger of one with some classic solid doom laden licks flowing through the song from the guitar department.
Father Time gives us a minute or two to gather it together as it takes the form of a moody spoken word number over acoustic guitar before ‘Dream Again (Hellenbach)’ broodily bruises in, slowly swaggering into life and getting its groove on with vocals building louder as if the singer is unleashing a magical spell. Speaking of magicians they have their own ‘Moonchild,’ not one that has anything to do with Fields Of The Nephilim but one that is no doubt an ode toCrowley. It really does have that arcane 70s rock type of feel about it but it is one that does not strike as Poe faced and up itself as certain other bands, this is more about getting your audience to dance around than a band playing on stage calling it a ritual and bathing themselves in goats blood. Well not that I have seen them live but….
There are plenty more hefty riffs to come. I particularly like the bands self named Venomous Maximus with a wailing siren at the beginning which is rather errr Sweet and some nice jagged looping guitar spirals. It’s left to Hell’s Heroes to bring it all to a galloping climax which it does in anthemic style.
For a fairly young band formed only in 2010 this lot are doing all the right things, they have already shared the stage with the likes of Mastodon, Pentagram, Saint Vitus, The Sword and Graveyard and on the strength of this album hopefully it will not be long before they get taken on tour by a like minded band and hit Europe in style. Until they do this is well worth checking out.
(7.5/10 Pete Woods)
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