Thysantmünz - Намордник
Combing through the ‘New Arrivals’ section of Bandcamp can be emotionally debilitating, especially when it comes to finding decent doom music.
Megalith Grave
If your thing is cookie monster vocals and cacophonous, grinding, repetitious, harmonics, there is a vast array of new doom available. Let’s take a gander at some of the new stuff, which is so arrantly poor that you wonder what these bands are thinking. Who on God’s green earth told them they were good?
First up is Thysantmunz, a doom outfit from Russia who just released an album entitled Намордник. I listened to one track, called “Чур,” which opens with potential – snarling, growling guitars and lots of slapping high hats, followed by supposedly demonic-flavored vocals riding ‘80s big-hair-infused guitars and then descends into the pit of monotony, ad infinitum, as the drummer struts his stuff, including tedious, never-ending measured blast beats.
Next is Megalith Grave, with their album Invocations in Black Nostagia, who describe their sound as “raw depressive black metal.” Translation: planarian black metal infused with doom elements. A planarian, for those wondering, is a small flatworm whose digestive tract ends with its stomach so that it regurgitates what it eats.
Total mediocrity and boring as well.
One track was enough to make me regurgitate, too. It’s called “Beyond the Trees Amongst the Whispers.” It’s one protracted blast beat accompanied by dreary suppurating guitars topped by fiendish screams from Hell.
Last but not least is Revered and Reviled Among All Others, a “doomviolent” outfit from Modesto, which is nearby and, when I saw the word “Modesto,” I thought wow, cool. A local band makes good. Maybe, if you enjoy industrial-laced noise seemingly thrown together in a few minutes – and improvised to the nth-degree. The EP/album is called The Atrophy of Empathy.
“Sychophants to the Oppressors” is one of two tracks available for listening. The song embraces droning dirty guitars, a slapping bassline, and crunching drums. Total mediocrity and boring as well.
It’s time for some bands to re-think their ambitions. Doom is not just listless music with cavernous guitars shuffling to a lame end.
