I do kind of have to say this but the serial killer subject matter that this album relentlessly follows like its predecessors does kind of conflict me slightly at times. It’s a matter of geographical and time location which meant I was very much aware that a certain sad cunt we later found out was called Sutcliffe was murdering women in my area when I was in my very early teens. And that most blokes with white cars of a certain model were being questioned by the police, including a neighbour. That close to home it gives you perspective and you never forget that to a person, these are sad, weak and sick fucks doing obscene things to humans for (to quote a fictional detective) the most trivial of reasons. They are not ‘cool’.
Having said that, legendary Japanese band Church Of Misery have a sound and a feel that never lets you forget that you are dredging the bottom-most sewers that humanity can reach. They have a gloriously dirty guitar tone accentuated by the tortured, twisted screams of vocalist Hideki Fukasawa as he contorts himself around the riffs (literally if you have had the pleasure of seeing their insane live show). They are still as heavy as all Hell collapsing and, for me, they are the band who have most successfully bridged the gaps between sludge, doom and stoner and have a unique identity that teeters on utter mayhem when they let rip. After their justifiably critically acclaimed third album in Houses Of The Unholy, there has been the loss of fine Australian guitarist Tom Sutton, replaced beautifully by Ikuma Kawabe which is no small feat and…. well, here we are, album number four. Seven songs, one cover of a track by 70s band Quatermass and a whole lotta murder.
I’ll let you google the depredations of the individual murderers yourself.
Opening song B.T.K is, save for a sample, an instrumental built on a huge falling riff and more in the mix psyche keyboards than usual. Mid-paced, mean, dark as a bloodstained basement and with a riff that just ploughs and destroys.
Yup, they still got it.
Lambs To The Slaughter reminds us all of the bounce and groove that CoM bring to the game, too. When they drop into slow gear in the midsection here you can almost feel your guts vibrating, and the lead break is just a glorious rock out that you just want to go on for days but they have the sense to keep it short and… well they don’t do sweet but you get the picture. It’s like it’s physically impossible for them not to get their heavy as thunder boogie head on. Just listen to the thumping great drumming on Brother Bishop as the riff digs into the groove or the closing minute of their psyched out guitar work which is just a disorienting scream of insanity. Stunning. Backing vocals are used on this track too, something rarely done elsewhere by them. Here it really adds to the twisted, nasty atmosphere; so we have a smidgen of progression and it works.
Four songs in we find Cranley Gardens, a bass led soft and spooky intro which reaches into a slow burning drag riff of excellent touch and judgement. If you have never heard the band before this is probably the part where it hits you just how deft they are as musicians rather than just a howl of madness. Crazy as it all is they know how to ride this beast.
Each song here is its own little world. Rather like the monsters they portray, the tracks are locked in, isolated in obsessions all their own but by sheer force of musical identity Church Of Misery still pull it together as a coherent album. Deceptively controlled, well tailored songs line up in perfect position but you still know that somewhere they will lose their shit and head into a chaos fuelled musical passage and you love them all the more. It’s that love of looseness that gives everything space to breathe and the musicianship shines through rather than some sterile polish blocking it out.
The cover track, One Blind Mice, is a sparser song than their own compositions, three minutes of deconstructed 70s psyche rebuilt as a twitching bone machine with a cracking hook and melody and should be a blast live, too. All Hallowed Eve drags us back into the cave with their typical dense sound and wandering guitar lines as the bass beautifully backfills.
Then we enter the epic thirteen minutes of Dusseldorf Monster which for me is the real killer track, up there with the electric Born To Raise Hell from the previous album. Slow and ponderous to begin, classic stoner painted doom it weaves its way into Hell via phrases lyrical and musical repeated in an increasingly fractured frame. Vocals collapse into a drunken slur to be replaced a delirious guitar break morphing into a frantic spaced out boogie like a crackhead; all jitters and moans.
This album sounds so ‘live’ it crackles with energy; a goddamned superbly matched production and band. After four years adrift from the studio Church Of Misery have screamed, roared and bludgeoned their way to psyched out brilliance.
Still masters of brutality, still so off kilter you wonder how they stand. A sound as filthy as a three day drunk on meths and writhing with demons, Church Of Misery just about rock the fuck out of most bands on the planet right about now.
Just all kinds of awesome.
(9.5/10 Gizmo)
17/05/2013 at 8:58 pm
Quality review of a thoroughly epic album sir!
19/05/2013 at 5:55 pm
Cheers Spenny 🙂