ALBUM REVIEW: Leechfeast, "Neon Crosses"

By: Stephen Murray

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 30/03/2018

Label: Dry Cough Records |

Rope And Guillotine

Taken altogether, the vacillation between violence and misery is compelling

“Neon Crosses” DD//LP track listing:

1). Sacrosanct

2). Halogen

3). Tar

4). Razor Nest

The Review:

It’s not that I would nail myself to the masochist mast, but I have to admit there is something ritualistically cleansing about laying down in a dark room, depriving all senses except hearing, and shattering that peaceful seclusion with a high volume deluge of grisly, bone-biting aural violence. Despite the horrific grime one is subjected to, the effect is one of paradoxical cleanliness and peace. But for the ritual to work it must be pure; nothing watered down into a thin, homeopathic tincture; it must be something viscous and foul-tasting that lets you know that you’ve been medicined, a spiking that lets you know you’ve been spoken to. If you need this treatment as much as I do, then “Neon Crosses” is your draught.

This is Leechfeast’s first full-length for five years (their second overall), and their first release since the split with New Zealand's now defunct grime lords Meth Drinker back in 2015. Perhaps significantly, this is the first recording since Hans Wubs took over the sticks from Marko Šajn in an otherwise remarkably consistent line-up since their nascence in 2010.

As the title suggests, it cuts an urban path. For Slovenia’s Leechfeast, the children of the night are not wolves, but other predators skulking between the streetlights. They represent the mould growing in the gutters, the weeds pushing through the concrete, blackened foil in the alleys and the screams of victims slapping back off wet brick, steel and glass.

At first harken, I quickly understand why comparisons have been drawn between “Neon Crosses” and the excoriating sounds of Cough and Moss, but it is no carbon copy. Instead, the band manage to steer their sound safely across the ever busier shipping lanes of modern doom, deftly avoiding collision with the other lumbering tankers which seem to be riding in each other’s wakes.

An example of this subtle divergence comes on the second track, ‘Halogen’. Its linchpin riff is like someone heartlessly slinging on a string of Reggie Dixon numbers when you're too goofed to intervene, leaving you to be waltzed through to some dreadful other dimension.

Highlight song, ‘Razor Nest,’ well positioned at the end of the record, opens with gloomily melodic, reverb-washed singing, drawing parallels with 40 Watt Sun, except with all the hope for tomorrow extinguished. Then despair gives way to anger once more and the vocals lash out again, the guitars moving from minors to chromatics, the whole peppered with samples from what sounds to be space age American public information films. The effect is that of a broken emergency broadcast system piping messages exhorting calm which echo through the empty streets of a post-neutron bombed world.

At no point does “Neon Crosses” feel protracted, each of the eight to ten minute tracks is extremely well judged; the bars allotted to the changing riffs and motifs is perfect and the sound achieved in the studio and in post-production is crisp, capturing some of that high-end fizz that gives character to otherwise bass rich guitar tone and slow skin pummeling.

The record invokes that horrid yet splendid feeling of your flesh being torn from you in long, misshapen strips, and then dresses the wounds in melancholic, chant-like singing and single picked guitar lines more apt to surrendering to the darkness than exalting it. Taken altogether, the vacillation between violence and misery is compelling. Would definitely recommend for your next isolation tank session

“Neon Crosses” is available here

Band info: bandcamp || facebook

‘Leechfeast/Meth Drinker’ - Split 12" (Review)

Album Type: Split 12

Date Released: 15/5/2015

Label: Dry Cough / Raw Birth Records

‘Leechfeast/Meth Drinker’ split 12 track listing:

1). Leechfeast – Aimless

2). Meth Drinker – Sewer

Review:

Another split, from two of the most brutal and evil fuzz mongering creations to ever bully their way onto the airwaves, Leechfeast and Meth Drinker? Oh hell Yeah! 

At 2 songs long, but over 19 minutes in length, it's a no brainer. This split is between some incredibly heavy bands, with absolutely no highs, simply knuckle-dragging, scum fuzzy, simplistic doom riffing that one can imagine without some extreme drug habits. Along the Lines of Keeper and War Iron, neither band gives so much as an inch of comfort in their sound, keeping it low and slow, with vocalists who sound like they are simply vomiting their demons out. The move for a 12" record was smart, because these long songs could fill both sides of a 7" easily, on their respective own.

Starting this party is Leechfeast, with Aimless (9:18). They start with a lullaby of feedback, which they just slam into a blackish wall of riffs. It’s very plodding, very steady. The vocals are wavering behind this monolithic noise, and give a very trippy air to the first parts. It's a very bleak sound, and really doesn't ever go away. The real vocals come shortly after, with much venom, acidic and simply thrown at the listener. Leechfeast don't want you comfortable, they wish to crush you under a sky of grating blackness. There is no flair to the rest of the band, the drums are just as plodding and sound somewhat like they are in another room, so as not to detune when the guitars crank up. If there is a bass player, he was swallowed by the Elder Gods sometime ago, and he was buried somewhere in that pedal signal. And that's not to say it never changes. It goes from what sounds like a stupidly simple Sabbathian riff with regular string changes around 5 and a half minutes, into what sounds like a bridge cable being picked in an really pissed off manner. 

Even more basic than your average white girl, Meth Drinker literally sounds like tectonic plates smashing against one another. It’s a huge, bass ridden sound, and it overwhelms the ear. They don't do leads of fret work, but they have cornered the market on huge, held riffs and chords. This is what your doom sounds like as it marches, ceaselessly, until the fateful time you meet in your last moments. It plods with purpose, thrumming with what sound like thick cables, the bass continuing a simple riff, as guitar fluctuates and offers screaming feedback to the Heavy Gods. It very simple, very heavy, and offers nothing but the sonic equivalent of a detuned monster truck. It is monstrous, and will slowly push you into a sonic morass for the almost 10 minute runtime.

This split isn't for the faint of ear, and will test the casual doom/drone fans. Enjoy!

Words by: Hunter Young

‘Leechfeast/Meth Drinker’ is available here

For more information:

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