By a stroke of luck, my Last.fm did something good for once and recommended me this band called Church of Misery. I usually don't pay close attention to these recommendations as they are usually a bit off (seriously, stop recommending me stuff like Bon Jovi), but the name sounded dope and they apparently fell somewhere into that doom metal category. So I checked them out and to my surprise, they happened to be exactly what I was looking for - heavy, groovy, doomish metal with hints of stoner and psychedelic rock thrown in for good measure. They were even Japanese, which after hearing the vocals, came as bit of a surprise. Finally, I realized nearly every song they've written is inspired by a serial killer. I was sold. And to further showcase my complete ignorance, this band has existed since 1995 (although I guess at that time, I wouldn't have appreciated their music since I thought Korn was the heaviest shit ever).
So after this stunning discovery, I went ahead and listened to some of their earlier albums before giving their latest release, Houses of the Unholy, a spin. In comparison to some of the band's earlier works, House of the Unholy, has a much cleaner and crisp production. The overall sound however, still follows in the vein of a drugged out Black Sabbath. Like most Church of Misery songs, the tracks are rather lengthy ranging from four to nearly nine minutes (with five of the eight tracks topping seven minutes). Despite the tracks being rather long, they never seem to drag on, mainly because the riffs are so damn catchy.
Take for example, the opening track, "El Padrino" which quietly starts things off with a gruesome sound sample drowned in static and feedback, before breaking into some dense, momentous guitar hooks and riffs. The song prods ahead, a lurching wave of dense guitar work and Hideki Fukasawa's raw and throaty vocals, crashing into a flurry of heated riffs abruptly then melting into a thick fog of psychedelic rock. Things pick up again, and suddenly that super-long-nearly-nine-minute track is practically over.
This seems to be the general case for this album. Every track pretty much falls into this musical formula of psychedelic passages coated in feedback mixed with some intense heavy guitar driven sections with some variations, but luckily the band's instrumentation and song writing more than compensates for this. The middle interlude of "Blood Sucking Freak" breaks out of the sludgy guitar rhythm for a rather graceful guitar solo, which despite being rather warm and melodic, perfectly suits the structure of the song. Other tracks such as "Shotgun Boogie" illustrate the band playing with greater desperation and urgency, unleashing flurry after flurry of major riffage.
While this record will really hit the spot for doom metal enthusiasts, I can't deny the fact that Church of Misery has not exactly reinvented the genre for this album. Houses of the Unholy still follows the general trend of their previous releases, but the formula has definitely been improved - the songs are just catchier, better written, and harder hitting. Aside from this minor complaint, this is a very solid release, a total beast of an album, and worthy of any fan of doom.
