Album Type: Full-Length
Date Released: 03/10/2014
Label: Self
Released
‘So Goes The
Madness’ DD track listing:
1).
Doomsday Rituals
2).
Humanoid Beings Exhibiting Mindless Rage-Like Behaviour
3).
Here There Be Dragons
4).
Omen Eyes
5).
Deaf Dealer
6).
Famine Weather
7).
Silence of Sirens
Deep Sea Monster
Beast is
Justin
Cota
Justin
Voorhees
Trevor
Stutzman
Review:
Riffs,
riffs everywhere. Riffs that crawl out
of blackened, lurid depths, riffs that claw at your ankles like a lunatic at
his prison wall; riffs that were raised by wolves and know not a sophisticated
human language, only the howling savagery of their adopted parents.
It’s
very rare that a band comes along and blows everything out of the water, a band
that makes you stop in your tracks, curse with a bewitched smile and want to
tell absolutely everyone you know that this is the one incredible album. That
however, is just how much Deep Sea Thunder Beast’s second release in two years
compels me. It’s an album that stares at pigeonholes and laughs at them; it
strives to make reference to a plethora of them without actually fitting into a
single one.
It
races or trudges through almost every tempo in the book – from the slow
pounding of ‘Doomsday Ritual’s’ early passages to the thunderous thrash of
‘Omen Eyes.’ It spits out riffs, like a child tasting bad medicine, in
movements that are almost involuntary spasms, they just can’t help but break
out into a frenzy of fretwork and hammering drums. So often these riffs come,
not only when you least expect it, but when they really shouldn’t – but that’s
what makes this album work so well.
The
appropriately titled ‘Here Be Dragons,’ which begins with a phaser-coated riff
before stomping to a mid-tempo assault, is a track which will delight fans of
Mastodon, The Sword and Melvins. It bleeds groove and fury, it jolts your neck
every which way and, in all, underlines the band’s superb ability to smash
through genre walls, steal a handful of jewels and piss off through the next.
‘Deaf
Dealer’ builds on rapid fire snare drums, exploding into an impassioned vocal
performance from Justin Cota which, at times, sounds like a more aggressive and
boisterous Thin Lizzy. It’s a rock n’ roll song in short, and a fine one at
that, Ace of Spades era Motörhead even pokes through the mix at times. But what
makes the song what it is, is the multi-dimensional feel to it all. Like I
said, this is a rock n’ roll song in principle, but in reality it is so much
more – it manages to broaden its appeal into the forays of stoner and punk too.
Then, before you’ve had a chance to take in the first half of the track’s fast,
skull battering dysphoria, it regurgitates a rapturous doom metal bile. Think
Goya punching Electric Wizard in the face.
The
three piece, who call San Diego their home town and are at this point far more
unknown than they should be, keep you rapt from start to finish. Indeed,
moments of more lulling quiet, such as the bass led beginnings of ‘Famine
Weather’ let a breeze float through the record, breaking up what has been up to
this point an altogether punch-drunk affair.
I
like an album that keeps you on your toes and ‘So Goes The Madness’ does
exactly that. From the vocals which can float, soar and growl like a pissed off
grizzly bear, to the incessant but ever fluctuating riffs and moods laid out
across this musical journey, it never repeats itself. But at the same time it
bears a powerful and faultless continuity; these changes never deviate from the
band’s recognisable sound, rather, it emphasises just how broad a spectrum that
sound encompasses.
This
is a truly fantastic record; let’s raise this band to the heights their music
so richly deserve.
