#minotauri

Reverend Bizarre: III: So Long Suckers (2007)

It’s been 15 years since Reverend Bizarre capped a memorable career of doom -- as they put it: “before it started to suck” -- and I must therefore celebrate their foresight with a few choice words from my All-Music Guide review of 2007’s Reverend Bizarre III: So Long Suckers.

Indeed, the Finnish trio of Albert Witchfinder (vocals, bass), Peter Vicar (guitar), and Earl of Void (drums, guitar, keyboards) had already announced their plans to disband ahead of this, their third official (*) long-player, so it was some consolation that it saw them doing so, if not on a total high note, then with a bang.

A very BIG bang. 

Not only was the album so long it required two, packed-to-the-gills CDs (the first clocking in at precisely 66:06) and this posthumous, four-LP box set (**) to house its unwieldy 250 minutes of music, but it boasted no less than three songs extending beyond a gargantuan, almost patently absurd 25 minutes.

Alas, only one of these -- half-hour opener “They Used Dark Forces/Teutonic Witch” -- frankly justified the effort, packing more songs-within-its-song than a pod of charging Oliphants has trunks, and arguably trailing only Sleep’s historic “Dopesmoker” in terms of monolithic, multi-part doom magnificence. 

Not so the remaining tandem of “Sorrow” and “Anywhere Out of This World,” which, though they were inevitably imbued with some powerful moments and clever ideas, really did overstay their welcome ... and I bet you saw that figure of speech coming from a mile away!

Not coincidentally, Reverend Bizarre’s somewhat more “restrained” (you know, just twelve, fifteen minutes, or so) contributions to this opus were also more successful, especially “Funeral Summer” and the absolutely incredible “Caesar Forever,” which climaxes with majestic church organs in while repeatedly chanting:

“Christs may come and Christs may go, but Caesar is forever!” (***)

And, as a final pair of bite-sized cuts -- the driving instru-groove “Kundalini Arisen” and the hidden farewell noise collage “Mallorca” -- ultimately prove, the bizarre reverends were keenly aware of the fast-diminishing means of expression at their disposal. 

Were this not the case, then the band wouldn’t have called it quits even before So Long Suckers arrived in records stores, leaving behind one of the few discographies that could challenge Electric Wizard for the doom metal throne in this first decade of the 21st Century.

And this is why I remain their humble servant, whose thoughts drift to Lovecraft in search of an adequate epitaph:

“That is not dead which can eternal lie; And with strange aeons even death may die.”

* Keep in mind that these infamously long-winded Fins defied format conventions by releasing a 74-minute “EP” in 2003’s Harbinger of Metal, and another hour-long ‘short-form’ in the hour long Return to the Rectory.

** Note the Crowley-inspired motto, “Doom What Thou Wilt,” striking cover art inspired by the works of Dutch-Indonesian painter Jan Toorop (1858 --1928), and generous booklet that you can ‘flip’ through overhead.

*** This quote is lifted from Ragnar Redbeard’s 1896 treatise on social darwinism, Might is Right.