Drown - Subaqueous

By Master of Muppets. If space is mankind's final frontier, the ocean's depths must be something like the birthplace of the end. To some extent it is where life as we know it first began its misguided adventures on Earth, a plane of existence close to our hearts by evolutionary proxy

By Master of Muppets.

Artwork by Adam Burke/Nightjar Art.

If space is mankind's final frontier, the ocean's depths must be something like the birthplace of the end. To some extent it is where life as we know it first began its misguided adventures on Earth, a plane of existence close to our hearts by evolutionary proxy; in another sense it is a world of its own which exists entirely beyond our grasp, elusive and magical in its indomitable vastness. It's a fantastical realm where the cold realities of science and the infinite possibilities of the imagination walk hand in hand into the dark, and many artists have attempted to turn this world we cannot see into something we can hear instead. One-man metal manufacturing monster Markov Soroka (Tchornobog, Aureole, Krukh) more than meets this challenge through the massive, immersive music of Drown; it turns out that the crushing darkness of funeral doom provides a perfect tonal palette for painting the depths of our oceans into a vivid soundscape, and Subaqueous - Soroka's sophomore slab of sea-centric slow-burners - is a beautifully merciless rendering of such a scene, one that you have zero business missing out on.

The point of this genre is to create something that stifles and swallows the listener, and where better to do that than at the bottom of the ocean? Soroka seizes this sonic potential to further a tale that began with Drown's debut, Unsleep, chronicling the drowning of an unnamed protagonist and drawing it out into a collection of aquatic metaphors and tempestuous funeral doom. Purveyors of such aren't known for being particularly sympathetic to the attention spans or time restraints of others, and Drown is no exception. Subaqueous is divided into two colossal tracks, the first of which ("Drowned VI: Mother Cetacean") boasts a duration just shy of 22 minutes while the second ("Drowned VII: Father Subaqueous") clocks in a few seconds over that mark. Both songs cultivate their own mood and atmosphere, achieving a perfect foil relationship along the way, yet the pair are equal in terms of sheer oppressive lethality.

At first blush, "...Mother Cetacean" is the gentler of the two, ushering in its chapter with a serene dance of reverberant atmospherics and gently coruscating guitars. Just as bioluminescence and the pale sheen of pigmentation's absence color the watery deep, a deceptively blithe melody dances along a current of subterranean tone and sustain, instilling the surrounding dark with a sense of vibrancy. However, the dance is deceptive in these dangerous depths - this is the bottom of the ocean, after all; despite the almost jocular nature of "...Mother Cetacean", it is still funeral doom. Guttural bellows and thunderous distortion are interwoven into the ebullience with fluid cohesion, maintaining a delicate balance of wonder and unease perfectly befitting the ocean's floor. Here there is violent life playing a deadly game, and what fleeting light can be found offers just as little in the way of safety as the shadows that linger further beyond in the pitch black hostility of "...Father Subaqueous".

The second, titular half of Subaqueous makes no attempt to convey, promote or else harbor life of any kind; "...Father Subaqueous" is pitiless and unforgiving, a masterful manifestation of the inhospitable realm of pressure and darkness that lurks beneath us all. Here, the growls become ungodly shrieks, and the churning low end rumbling of the guitars has erupted into a monolithic expanse of unbridled fury. There is nothing playful or pleasant here, only a 22 minute view of the screaming maw of the void. Though it is unclear to this reviewer just what exactly might be happening to the story's protagonist at this particular point, it is all but certainly all but unbearable. Where "...Mother Cetacean" brings us somewhere new by incorporating elements which are almost diametrically opposed to funeral doom's customary bleakness, "...Father Subaqueous" harnesses every bit of incessant wrath known to the genre then dials things up to 11 with a splash of black metal.

Unlike mankind and the oceans that make our invasion of this planet possible, the two tracks which comprise Subaqueous exist in perfect harmony with each other. In the simplest of terms, "...Mother Cetacean" captures the essence of life and light amidst the deepest reaches of said oceans, while "...Father Subaqueous" levels out the album with death and darkness. For an offering rooted in a genre that defies the notion of moderation, Subaqueous is a thing of perfect balance. If funeral-at-sea doom sounds like it'll float your boat and you have 45 minutes to spare - and, frankly, that's a good chunk of us these days - then give Subaqueous a spin. It is well worth your time, and it has already jumped to the top of my personal favorite albums from 2020 thus far.

Black Curse - Endless Wound

By Bryan Camphire. Speaking about death metal, in an interview with MTV back in 1991, Morbid Angel front man David Vincent offered this opinion, "It's the extremity of it. Death metal is the the most extreme form of music there is. There are no boundaries." Some three decades later

By Bryan Camphire.

Artwork by Denis Forkas Kostromitin.

Speaking about death metal, in an interview with MTV back in 1991, Morbid Angel front man David Vincent offered this opinion, "It's the extremity of it. Death metal is the the most extreme form of music there is. There are no boundaries." Some three decades later, how bands can continue to push boundaries in a genre where there never were any to begin with... this is what keeps rabid fans coming back for more. With Endless Wound, Black Curse has made one of the more extreme new death metal records you are liable to hear this year. This quartet from Denver, Colorado achieves this by focusing on heaviness, atmosphere, and riffs.

The heaviness Black Curse brings to the table is thanks to ferocious playing and a monstrous production. This music is full throttle right out of the gate. Every instrument nearly in the red and yet somehow a level of clarity is maintained. Each voice is distinct in the whirling blackened din. The smoldering low end sounds almost completely untethered, making it the perfect vessel for the searing solos and wailing vocals the band scatters on top.

As far as ambiance goes, the band themselves put it like this: "to those who have drawn down the moon, joined in darkness in worlds without end, BLACK CURSE unfolds its evil." In this one sentence displayed on their site, the band name-checks three seminal records of extreme metal by Beherit, Demoncy and Katharsis respectively. Indeed, Endless Wound can be seen as carrying the torch along these lines and into the present. The harrowing use of delay on the vocals - made infamous by Katharsis - is the most overt homage that Black Curse deploys. The band's bio goes on to say, "The band rips open holy portals to times when Black and Death Metal shared the same principles, the same aesthetics, and the same diabolical wrath." The statement holds true. The atmosphere of Endless Wound is pure nocturnal evil, plain and simple. It's at once a hymn to the ancients and their own unique sacrificial offering.

All this might not amount to much if not for the riffs, and Endless Wound has them in no short supply. The record is as calculated as it is aggressive. The band weaponizes tempo. At a cursory listen, their unrelenting sound resembles bestial war metal along the lines of modern masters like Diocletian, Deiphago, and Teitanblood. However, after breakneck starts, as the tracks wage onward, tempos are often slowed to half-time, as can be seen two and a half minutes into track 1, and again two minutes into track 3 and track 6, and again five minutes into cut 7. It's a formula that doesn't get tired on repeated listens because the riffs are so catchy and massive. Other tracks stay fast or mid-paced throughout. It's this use of rhythmic dynamics that really makes these songs memorable and spell-binding.

This is music as a living raging force, threatening to jump off the rails around each hairpin turn it races past. On their debut full length, Black Curse bulldozes through any strictures of orthodoxy, laying waste to boundaries between black and death, old school and new. All this is done in the name of evil unfolded.

Witch Mountain - Mobile of Angels

By Megan Scottie Ross. Heavy metal has evolved so much in the forty-four years of its existence that it's all too easy to forget about our roots. With every blast beat and sweep arpeggio, we get further from the dirt that we rose out of, and that dirt is richer than just “rock and roll.”

By Megan Scottie Ross.


Heavy metal has evolved so much in the forty-four years of its existence that it's all too easy to forget about our roots. With every blast beat and sweep arpeggio, we get further from the dirt that we rose out of, and that dirt is richer than just “rock and roll.” That soil of emotion and tension that was necessary for a genre as extreme as metal to arise was The Blues. So when I hear an album that digs into that foundation and turns up the rich, rich loam of blues music I immediately take notice. Mobile of Angels by Portland, Oregon's Witch Mountain is such an album. In fact, one could call Mobile of Angels a blues album just as easily as a doom metal one. Whatever genre lense you choose to view the album through, however, it is phenomenal.

Witch Mountain 2012. Photo © John Mourlas. All rights reserved.

The album isn't long, with only five songs and clocking in just under thirty-nine minutes. Amazingly in that thirty-nine minutes the band never repeats itself. These songs just don't have any traditional verse structure. Rob Wrong spins out amazing solos, and the guitar tone reminds me why a big ol' stack of guitar amps is such a desirable thing. Charles Thompson's bass keeps the sound amazingly fat—these guys aren't detuning to Drop-X, they're just putting pure blues into a heavy metal frame. Nathan Carson in particular impresses. Slow drumming is, in a number of ways, harder than fast drumming. When you're flying along with blasts and double bass, who really cares about your tom work or your cymbal tone? When you're going slow, every stroke is going to be heard. You can listen to this album just focusing on what Nathan does with cymbals and your time will still be well spent.

Witch Mountain 2012. Photo © John Mourlas. All rights reserved.

I'm tempted to say that vocalist Uta Plotkin is the star of the show, as her incredibly expressive voice is an essential part of what makes these songs, but that would be unfair to the rest of the band. Still, she sounds so much more comfortable singing these songs than she did on Cauldron of the Wild, an album that, while not bad, didn't stand out to me among the many other doom releases in 2012. Not this time. The songs dig in and catch you. The start-stop of “Psycho Animundi.” The almost spoken-word beginning of “Can't Settle.” Everything here sounds intensely personal in a way that heavy metal often lacks. “Your Corrupt Ways (Sour the Hymn),” the longest track and centrepiece of the album, in particular highlights this with lyrics like this:

I will wish you all of the best
As I walk away and relish
The sweet relief that I will feel
When I finally put my heels down.

The final two tracks are a bit different. The title track, half as long as the next longest song at only three and a half minutes, is a single drum beat away from being a witch house track. The leslie-drenched organ is absolutely haunting as Uta promises “Oh Dreamer, waking brings no comfort.” The album closer “The Shape Truth Takes” goes back to guitars, drums, and bass, but it's melancholy waltz instead of a gritty doom slammer like “Psycho Animundi.” The song hits an emotional climax that I haven't heard the likes of since Ihsahn's “Undercurrent.” The way the band builds the tension and emotion of the song using tone and volume is just phenomenal. When the guitar solo comes in it always brings tears to my eyes. “The Shape Truth Takes” isn't just the perfect song to close the album, but to close a chapter of the band's existence. It's fitting that this is the last thing that we'll ever hear from this version of Witch Mountain is a song this sad, as Uta Plotkin left the band to pursue other endeavours. I don't envy whoever ends up replacing her in the band, as they will have absolutely massive shoes to fill.

Witch Mountain 2012. Photo © John Mourlas. All rights reserved.

Nearly every time I listen to Mobile of Angels, I immediately restart the album as soon as it's ended. Jumping from “The Shape Truth Takes” back to “Psycho Animundi” is always jarring, but within a few bars I'm back in the music. It's exceptionally rare for me to get so hooked on an album these days that I play it exclusively twice or even three times in a row. With Mobile of Angels it happens nearly every time. I don't know what more to say other than that you should be listening to it right now. You'll never get the next thirty-nine minutes of your life back. You won't regret spending them on Mobile of Angels.