Wormsblood “Mastery of Creation Demos” LP (Barbarian Records, 2009):
George Magers showed me this one a few summers ago. When I asked about the artist, George just said: “It’s the guys from Davenport doing black metal.” I hate to stereotype a band, but from my experiences listening to Davenport, I couldn’t fathom the pulverizing bleakness of Wormsblood. But Clay Ruby seems willing to tackle any musical niche he enjoys. Although I really don’t care for a lot of his projects, at least he has the gall to branch out and know he’s bound to win over most experimental music fans at some point with one of his creations. If his power electronics/ambient/haunted circuit incarnate Burial Hex proves anything, it’s that he possesses the ability to summon the darkness and construct the polar opposite of the Davenport stuff I’ve heard.
So, with the small amount of information I acquired about Clay Ruby since my initial Wormsblood listening session, the context of the black metal project. It also comes as no surprise that Ruby jumps around the boundaries of black metal with the second Wormsblood demo featured on this LP. It starts out with an attack that brings to mind the spastic assault of Japanese hardcore/metal warlords GISM. “Fragments of the Witch” revels in a dank dungeon wherein chain-bound slaves sleep in cowboy piss. Echoing wildman vocals from the stone torture basement collide with Nordic conquest guitars. The crew expands the song logically with triumphant guitar bridges and a battle worn collapse.
From there, Ruby’s warriors blaze a path through the typical black metal tunnels. Lightning fast distorted guitars, pained screams, nature sounds and mystical ambient electronic mists round out the band’s basic sound. “Sig Bind” thumps its chest with a psychotic drumbeat and the stream of guitar violence that typifies black metal crypts, as the singer belts out manic distress calls like a mother holding her recently deceased child after a suicide bombing. On “The First Dim Shinings (of those about to be Awakened),” the black mass turns to a mental asylum choir band’s rendition of a traditional folk ballad, minstrel spirit slogs through the Revolutionary War drumbeat tempo.
The Gravehill Demos, a 2004 collection and my first introduction to the band, sprawls out a rougher sound with vocals blending with the instrumental core like phantasms lurking in the corners of a dilapidated house. Jet fueled guitars burn through songs and the prototypical Animal from “The Muppets” drum beats help light the one-dimensional four-track blaze. The band throws spooky psychedelica into the breakdown on “A Wolf in the Night,” with wolves, distorted guitar and vagrants howling around a drum circle. The threatening whispering, dog barks and tape fuckery between songs sounds more like the creepy passages on We’re only in it for the Money than Darkthrone. Odder still, on “Of a Mourning Phase Unstirred,” the band slows the tempo and allows the singer (Zodiac Wyrdskull, The Lung or someone else with a funny name) perform a little Alice Cooper grandstanding, as he shouts indecipherable nonsense with the black metal fire beneath him.
Though I enjoy black metal music, my knowledge and taste in the genre tends to stray from that of the firmly entrenched black metal fans that I know. I still like the so-called “fake black metal” of bands like Xasthur and Leviathan. I like the fact that so many of black metal frontmen obscure their vocals by screaming, using horrid recording gear and piles of distortion and sometimes pushing their yelps further back into the mix so the vocals act as an instrument rather than a device for conveying lyrics. Seriously, I don’t want to know what these guys sing about. Haunted forests, demons, the occult and olden times fail to interest me and, if I possessed the ability to decipher the screams, it would put a damper on my listening experience. Luckily, Wormsblood overcome all of these possible pitfalls by sticking to the original formula.
News:
Scott Foust is bringing his film “Here’s to Love” around Europe. From the Swill Radio Web site: “We are very busy here at HQ. I am in the midst of arranging a long tour of Europe for my film, Here's To Love!, as well as a variety of other performances. I'll be doing music shows as a duo with Frans de Waard under the name The Tobacconists. Frans and I will have time to work out the material and I know we'll be superb. I'm really looking forward to working with Frans.
Besides those shows and the film screenings, I'll also be doing my performance piece The Four Accomplishments a few times and maybe a lecture or two. The first show is a World Premier screening of Here's To Love! at Extrapool in Nijmegen on March 28; the last show on the continent is a screening of HTL! at Bozar in Brussels April 24, followed by The Tobacconists at Divus Gallery in London on the 25, and a screening of HTL! and a performance of The Four Accomplishments on April 26. This is a very exciting adventure for me. I have to thanks my friends Jaason von Bannisseht, whose determination is the only thing that made this tour happen; and Frans who has worked like a rented mule to make it all work. Here's to you two!”
Scott needs to book gigs from April 6 to the 13th. You can get in touch with him through the Swill site. Also, check out the great new comp on Pineapple Tapes called Lasting. It’s the final release for Foust’s vanity label. Two other fantastic Swill releases, also: the long awaited Ian Middleton LP and an IFCO live CDr.
Next:
The Country Teasers
7”s; lots of 7”s, good ones
The awesome new Axemen reissue.
0 comments:
Post a Comment