By: Mark Ambrose
Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 13/07/2018
Label: Armageddon Shop
Churchburn return with
more relentless nihilism, it is apocalyptically ambitious and the music is as rabidly unholy as their name would suggest.
“None
Shall Live… The Hymns of Misery”
CS//CD//DD//LP track listing
1. Vexare
2. Lines of Red
3. Misery Hymns
4. Authorized to Cleanse
5. Before the Inferno
6. Relieved by Burning Lead
7. Kaustos
The Review:
In 2014, Rhode Island’s Churchburn
unleashed “The Awaiting Coffins” –
one of the heaviest, most auspicious debuts in sludge. With a pedigree that included members of Vital Remains and Grief, the accomplished
musicianship wasn’t a surprise – it was the sheer fucking menace that did me
in. The riffs, the production, the
punishing rhythms and drum work all coalesced into one of my favorite go-to
records. But with four years and a
lineup change, there was, perhaps, the troubling thought that Churchburn would be another one of those miraculous
one-and-done projects. Thankfully, with “None Shall Live… The Hymns of Misery”, Churchburn returns with more relentless nihilism than I’d
thought possible. If anything, this is
more apocalyptically ambitious, with consistent audio references to natural
disaster: waves crashing, winds shrieking, and always the agonized mass of
human voices. And as for the music… Well
damn, it’s as rabidly unholy as their name would suggest.
From the seething, crackling ambient nightmare
tones of “Vexare”, Churchburn establish “…The
Hymns of Misery” as a production layered with pure filth. The repeated, dirge like riff is vaguely
industrial and overtly terrifying – I imagined planetary siege engines,
powdered bones trailing behind, crackling through a domain of carbonized
waste. After that intro, the chiming,
watery lead guitar of “Lines of Red”
belies the real songwriting chops underneath the Churchburn
chaos. There are hooks and harmonies
that symphonic posers would love to copy, but these moments are all the more
stellar when juxtaposed with the fried, chugging rhythm lines. Dave Suzuki’s demonic vocal delivery is
uniformly unhinged, conveying pure rage at one moment and abject despair in the
next. And the guitar solo on this one is
sheer death shred mastery, before the finale of ignorant headbanging
perfection. The contrasts between the
ethereal (clean guitar lines and spare, distant samples) and thick, crushing
dissonance makes “Misery Hymns”
another compelling trek through hopelessness; the plodding trudge that gives
way to an epic finale is one of my favorite moments on record this year.
If there’s one element self-appointed “brutal”
bands sometimes lack, its virtuosity. In
that respect, Churchburn are astounding outliers, not only
for their shred and groove bona fides, but their facility with genre warping
and tonal shifts. “Authorized to Cleanse” and “Before
the Inferno” center around guitar pyrotechnics, but they are so tonally
distinct it’s mind boggling. While “…Cleanse” glides between harmonies and
neo-classical progressions, and borders on elegant black metal bombast, “…Inferno” is more distinctly avant
garde, using Eastern scales on top of groove oriented heavy blues sludge. Beneath this riff-worship, the rhythm section
is relentless, smashing out blast beats, looser classic doom, tribal sounds and
inhuman industrial beats, rooted by thick, gnarly bass tones. “Relieved
by Burning Lead” serves as the apotheosis of the record, opening with a
haunting spoken word intro before launching into a chilling anti-human
anthem. The winding melodies, throat
shredding vocals, double kick onslaughts, even frantic basslines (!) – each
time I queue up this track I can feel my blood pressure rising, my BPM slowly
sliding into the red. It’s an ordeal of
a song, but I find myself blasting it over and over again, as if I can somehow
inure myself to its corrosive power.
Closing track "Kaustos" acts as a parallel of “Vexare” – another dark slab of instrumental metal that is somehow
more mournful than the industrial inhumanity of Vexare. This feels like a requiem.
“None Shall Live… The Hymns of Misery” is available here
