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| Album art: Dorota Jedrusik |
Muscle and Marrow is Kira Clark (vocals/guitar) and Keith McGraw (drums/samples), a pretty young two-piece Doom band from Portland/OR/USA. They formed in 2013 and now released their full length debut!!! album The Human Cry in a tape version through Breathe Plastic Records. A vinyl version will follow soon (September) by Belief Mower Records.
The Human Cry is nine songs and 39 minutes of a dark, doomy, haunting and depressing nightmare - a nightmare of a dangerous beauty, with atmospheres and emotions so intense, so alluring and enchanting they simply absorb you, totally suck you up.
Clark’s outstandingly expressive vocals move through soundscapes of droning distorted heaviness, melancholic somber guitar melodies and hypnotic drumming like the ghost of a tortured soul moves through its purgatory. Repetitions of short sentences or phrases in variations feel as if the ghost tries out different keys on the door that leads to salvation ... , vocals going from soft and clean to spoken words to guttural, harsh and forceful, changing pitch, sometimes adding a subdued tremolo. They are fragile and powerful, melodious and dissonant.
The songs are so richly and deeply textured with varying and contradicting elements that build a huge dynamic power and an overall unearthly atmosphere that constantly escapes your grip, and despite all the ultra-heaviness there’s a sense of this ghost floating around, it’s here and there, changing direction, changing moods and wears myriads of different shades of despair, melancholy, fear and anger.
[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]
The song “Spirits” is also featured on The Wicked Lady Show 67