Thursday 5 November 2015

Corrections House - 'Know How to Carry a Whip' (Album Review)

By: Mike Wilcox

Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 23/10/2015
Label: Neurot Recordings


From ‘The Hall of Cost’ to the close of the album the listener is privy to something unique, something special….something that is angry and upset.  With talents from an array of accomplished bands bleeding a sludgy-industrial muck into your brain, Corrections House reminds you that you aren’t the only one who hates your job, your city, your society...all of us do…

Know How to Carry a Whip CD//DD//LP track listing:

1. Crossing My One Good Finger
2. Superglued Tooth
3. White Man’s Gonna Lose
4. Hopeless Moronic
5. Visions Divide
6. The Hall Of Costs
7. When Push Comess to Shank
8. I Was Never Good At Meth
9. Burn The Witness


The Review:

I want to preface this review by stating that in addition for my appreciation of darker metal I also firmly appreciate industrial music.  It’s not uncommon to find Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, and others on my queue.  That being said when I read about Corrections House releasing a new album, ‘Know How to Carry a Whip’, reflecting on their first release, ‘Last City Zero’, I became excited.  Corrections House is a very interesting creature, seemingly operating as a whole only functioning via contributions from its independent parts: Mike IX Williams from Eyehategod spews his realities of a broken nation over Scott Kelly (Neurosis) on guitar, Sanford Parker of Buried at Sea on drums and processing, and Bruce Lamont of Yakuza adding haunting atmospheres on saxophone. 

Unlike Corrections House’s first release, ‘Last City Zero’, this album carries with it a much more collected and organized feeling as opposed to it’s former which, in my opinion seemed like a broken string of poems.  Great tracks stand alone, but not the same degree of coherence as ‘Know How to Carry a Whip’.  By the end of ‘White Man’s Gonna Lose’ the listener has been forcefully thrust through a truly dark blend of Sludge/Doom and Industrial.  Whatever these dudes put into their coffee they should keep drinking it, because as you are whipped into ‘Visions Divide’ you swear that someone switched the track for ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’, with that unmistakable, raw, and baron Scott Kelly western voice.  Sax kicks in from Bruce Lamont and the mental picture is enhanced.

While there are similarities that I can draw to Corrections House’s ‘Last City Zero’, I don’t feel the need to because I honestly don’t think that was the intention of the album.  From ‘The Hall of Costs’ to the close of the album the listener is privy to something unique, something special….something that is angry and upset.  With talents from an array of accomplished bands bleeding a sludgy-industrial muck into your brain, Corrections House reminds you that you aren’t the only one who hates your job, your city, your society...all of us do…  

‘Know How to Carry a Whip’ is available here



Band info: facebook | bandcamp