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Spooky Fingers: Sanctus Spiritus

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 May 29 2009 at 03:58:17 AM



Concede quaesumus… I used to pick up records based on song length. Hence my adolescent purchase of Deep Purple’s Made In Japan. Immeasurably disappointed, I turned to King Crimson and it was just the bell jar from there. Um, so yeah Doom Metal proper has a short history of provocatively long selections, equating song’s progress – or assertive lack thereof – with yet another bummer to ground in the day-to-day in. Dictator’s Dysangelist is most certainly a bummer, and its four tracks top out at nearly 80 minutes of music. Not as slow as it sounds, the title track’s melody and coda is all Zbigniew Preisner in tattered war dress, which is to say it’s ponderously elegiac and “European.” The film analogues don’t end there, thankfully, as the last three tracks are reminiscent of Clean Shaven with monkish chanting substituted for irritating AM radio scree. Among the trappings the only clunker here is keys, which are far too refined and intact amongst an utterly contrasting carrion backdrop. Vocals alternate seamlessly from medieval woe to street urchin jibber to Well of Souls sibilance! Guitar is exactly the eerily measured and lingering shit I beg for; every bit the Negro blues your granny warned you about… There are some lines written with pointed intent of haunting the head; Dictator accomplishes that, and that’s enough for me. Need visual aid? Go here: dictator.serpenehelimusic.com/

Virginia’s Towards Global Holocaust mash straightjacket shriek vocals into very motherfuckin’ untraditional Death Metal. I can almost see the vocalist carrying his piss bag down the clinic hall. The band’s self-released CD, Ever Onwards…, has little to choose from. Lots of puerile “ideas” masquerading as songs. Unsigned and will likely remain as such!

The Antaeus/Katharsis split has the worst artwork of any NED release, and two great tunes on 7” wax. The Antaeus side sounds less mechanistic than the ilk of Blood Libels; you can actually make out instruments – and MkM doesn’t sound his usual Hellboy working the drive-in window. (Please, next time include an A4 sized LSK poster.) Katharsis unleash “Black Lust,” an alleged holdout from the WWE sessions. Despite my unabashed hatred for that record, this is the redlined crypt-raiding I demand! The corpse is still warm if you’re lookin’ for a quickie, and other tales… complete with church keys. Available for illegal download on eastern European websites sure to give your hard-drive genital warts. You’ve been warned.

Klage is a very-German German doing the bedroom Black Metal thing. He’s not as dunderheaded as Herr Kanwulf. Nor is he as soporific as the lot of studio apartment American warriors endlessly rubbing one out to Varg & Co. Die Weihe Des Eises – Eine Grossweise is the ambitious, “god-bothering” I expected. Other than the 24-minute title-track, which comes off like second-rate Ondskapt, there’s not much worth listening to.

For whatever reason, Tasmania’s Asgard Musik has reissued Drowning the Light’s Ritual of Intolerance & Hatred – a practice session that sounds about as rough as it gets. When vocalist Scorpios isn’t going “Boooof!” into the mic, he’s retching like a mountain lion trying to pass a bowling pin though its colon. The music is cool, but two Satanic Warmaster covers? “I can’t go for that / No can do.”

[Stewart Voegtlin]
type: reviews    keywords: spooky fingers, lhp026, german germans, lsk,   

Comments (3)

  • 108 comments
    jniff
    10:23 AM on Aug 17, 2009 // reply »
    I'm still amazed you don't appreciate VVVVE...
  • 374 comments
    VOEGTLIN
    11:30 AM on Aug 17, 2009 // reply »
    Got the reish this week so maybe I can work through that...
  • 108 comments
    jniff
    12:53 PM on Aug 17, 2009 // reply »
    Try it on headphones. You may become a believer.
 

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