Saturday 14 May 2016

Lord Vicar - Gates Of Flesh (Album Review)


Release date: May 27th 2016. Label: The Church Within Records. Format: CD/DD/Vinyl

Gates Of Flesh – Tracklisting

1. Birth of Wine
2. The Green Man
3. A Shadow of Myself
4. Breaking the Circle
5. Accidents
6. A Woman Out of Snow
7. Leper, Leper

Review:

This album is traditional, majestic doom with a professional production containing music made by a band with extreme confidence in their creativity, construction and delivery. The band is comprised of devoted doom personnel who pay tribute to their influences by staying the melancholic course while bearing their own identifying mark of gloom. The album is full of purposeful song structures, passionate guitar solos, and powerful vocals. This is music for those who enjoy spoonfuls of soggy breakfast flakes submerged in a bowl of black bile all while watching the rivulets of rain stream the down dirty windows of their lonely house. Add this band to your collection of Count Raven, Reverend Bizarre and Seamount.

This band and album reverberates everything that makes doom a great genre. This is why we all love doom. Now to the individual songs...

Birth Of Wine - This song is slow and serpent like, weaving in and out of stride with guitar, bass and drums honed and hiked with customary doom. The haunting vocals oscillate between sugar and salt, all complimenting a story to tell. This song undulates and whips.

The Green Man - Are you ready? This is classic doom that stirs your mollusk colored heart. From start to finish, this represents the essential ingredients that are mindfully arranged on the top of the cornucopia of why I listen to this type of music.

A Shadow Of Myself - An instrumental portrayal of your own ghost which is an introduction to the next song.

Breaking The Circle - I had a dream. I saw myself run through the house, round up the poison, pound down the cellar door, tear open the earth and stuff the well with maniac mirth. This songs swings like a pendulum over the gothic pit. Great stuff.

Accidents - A track of rhythm coupled with heavy weight testimonial rock.

A Woman Out Of Snow - This song is a thumping affair, bookended with the delicateness of an angel's dirty wings.

Leper, Leper - This song captures shimmering cymbals like broken mirrors, hallowed drums from dead wood stumps, distorted guitars shooting forgotten flame, and vocals pleading with their truth chords and the aural sacrifice in sharing sonic lung disease. Is it peeling skin or just shedding scales? Are you dying or being reborn? Maybe you should stop worrying because maybe it is the same thing.

This is album is a goat's horn full of lavish doom and slither gloom. Bow your head, for this is not the dead hum we hear from the ever growing legion of doom. These acts of contrition are welcomed and stand out from the throng of those still swampy behind their doom purple ears, those who are willingly baptized in the rain of doom should heed and learn from these shapemasters of the dark. This is doom done as it was meant to be...a ghoulish journey into graven sound.

Words by Nick Palmisano

Gates Of Flesh will be available to buy via The Church Within Records from May 27th 2016.

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