#solothus

Witch Vomit: Funeral Sanctum (2024)

After a lifetime of listening to this music, heavy metal bands don't trigger my interest for any specific reason, but rather a random combination of sonic attributes that happen to suit my highly selective, to not say outrageously demanding, personal tastes.

Witch Vomit recently fit that extremely narrow lane with their third long-player, Funeral Sanctum -- not because they try to reinvent the wheel, let alone take the anthropological path to the style's prehistoric days -- just ... because.

Don't worry, I'll be more specific in a moment ...

Formed in Portland, OR, just over a decade ago, by T.T. (a.k.a. Tempter: vocals, guitar real name Tony Thomas) and V.V. (a.k.a. Filth: drums, born Vincent Van Dell), they later recruited bassist J.G. (that's it, just J.G.) and, in '17, second guitarist C.S. (Casey Lynch).

By then, Witch Vomit had already produced a demo, a single, an EP, and an LP (2016's A Scream from the Tomb Below), which they followed with another EP and LP ('19's Buried Deep in a Bottomless Grave), that really got tongues wagging on their behalf.

Alas, a certain global pandemic and a half-decade came and went (notwithstanding yet another EP and single) before the quartet reemerged with '24's Funeral Sanctum, at which point their pernicious brand of death metal with melodic sensibilities and black metal accoutrements finally got its hooks in me.

The latter manifest in the demonic lyrics, blast-beats, and tremolo-picking spraying all over frenzied highlights like "Serpentine Shadows" and "Decaying Angelic Flesh," but even these numbers incorporate deliberate passages to offset that intensity.

Perhaps the most recurring word used to describe Witch Vomit's music is "filthy," and while I'm not one to disagree (I've certainly heard filthier), I think this sells short T.T.'s tastefully melodious guitar work on personal favorites like "Black Wings of Desolation" and "Dominion of a Darkened Realm."

And while the band is also frequently characterized as "old school," I myself prefer "timeless," because the title track, "Endless Fall," and "Blood of Abomination," don't necessarily recall the early '90s pioneers so much as reflect death metal's simpler origins, pre-experimental diaspora.

In fact, simpler and shorter is the order of the day here, as an instrumental intro ("Dying Embers"), an interlude ("Abject Silence"), and a minute-long sprint ("Endarkened Spirits") bring the album to an end in a lean and mean half-hour.

Now that right there REALLY appeals to both my ever-shortening patience and my current lifestyle, because dad can only spare so much time for his scary, cookie monster music, while trying to raise two humans.

... Says the parent listening to bands called Witch Vomit.

Solothus | Realm of Ash and Blood | 2020

Finnish Death/Doom Metal

Artwork by Adam Burke (Nightjar) 

SOLOTHUS "No king reigns eternal", CD 2016 (An excellent second album of crushing Doom/Death Metal from Finland)

1. The Betrayer 2. No King Reigns Eternal 3. Darkest Stars Aligned 4. Malignant Caress 5. Towers in the Mist 6. The Winds of Desolation

Symptom: Caverns of Katabasis (2014)

If an extreme metal band's (black metal or otherwise) TRVE CVLT status is measured by how mysterious and obscure they manage to be, then Portland, Oregon's Symptom passed that credibility test with honors (they even had the requisite illegible logo) ... until it nullified their career prospects, anyway.

Ooops!

Formed in 2010 by one man wrecking crew J.T. Gilmore (vocals, guitar, bass, drums), Sympton self-released a pair of EPs in 2011 before signing with Mexico's Cráneo Negro Records and reissuing the tandem as '12's Beneath the Ossuary collection.

Next on the agenda, Symptom's first long-player, Opulent Atrocity (what a great title!), arrived in 2013 and today's subject, Caverns of Katabasis (an ancient Greek term for a voyage into the Underworld), followed a full decade ago, in '14.

Yet this copy must have sat, unwanted and forlorn, on a record store shelf ever since, because a few months ago it was tossed into a Discogs order I had placed -- free of charge -- by a retailer who, I can only surmise, made a business decision to free shelf space for more lucrative vinyl.

But the thing is: Symptom ain't half-bad; in fact, they're at least half-good, which is another way of saying they're competent without achieving anything truly original or transcendent with their familiar-sounding mix of death, doom, and other metallic forms.

"Risen from Shadow" is the token, atmospheric, instrumental intro, after which surprisingly frequent blast-beats often push "Marrow Spires" and "Omen of Crypts" into the black metal realm, before returning to their primary domain in slothful quasi-funeral doom dirges.

At their best, ensuing numbers like "Saturine" and "L'appel du Vide" (which translates to "Call of the Void" -- neat-o!) contrast the sort of detuned, leviathan riffs I can never get enough of with woeful guitar melodies or a lonesome, despairing piano ... lovely stuff.

But don't ask me about the unintelligibly howled lyrics ... I just can't be arsed to absorb their no doubt cryptic accounts of arcane lore.

And while I did look up the meaning of "Pnakotic" (Lovecraft, naturally), the song may as well -- indeed, would be better off, if you ask me -- recounting the exploits of Cthulhu (what it did on its summer vacation, etc.) as sharing a delicious panna cotta recipe.

All jesting aside, though, I've heard much worse albums of this ilk over the years from far more successful bands than Symptom, so I'll probably hang onto it for some time, in spite of the project's lacking personality or backstory.

About which, as I posited in my opening statement, maybe Symptom mastermind Gilmore was a little TOO successful at being UN-successful, but that hasn't stopped him from contributing his talents to other bands like Eosphoros, Ghoulgotha, and Void Manifest in recent years.

dISEMBOWELMENT: Transcendence into the Peripheral (1993)

Normally, my grammatical O.C.D. forces me to restore missing apostrophes to song titles and to refuse vanity band names that defy the natural order of upper- and lower-case letters (especially the dreaded ALL-CAPS), but I have to give metallic extremists dISEMBOWELMENT a pass.

Still deservedly revered in underground circles for their pioneering fusion of doom, death metal, and death-grind, these residents of Melbourne, Australia were active for less than five years starting in 1989, and, as far as I know, never even performed live before disbanding.

But dISEMBOWELMENT, which, in its longest-lasting line-up consisted of Renato Gallina (vocals, guitar), Jason Kells (lead guitar), Matthew Skarajew (bass), and Paul Mazziotta (drums) nevertheless excreted (sorry!) an influential and enduring body of work in that short span.

This consisted of two demos in 1990’s Mourning September and ‘91’s Deep Sensory Procession into Aural Fate, one EP, ‘92’s Dusk, that earned them a deal with Relapse Records, and one, absolutely essential full-length in today’s subject, ‘93’s Transcendence into the Peripheral.

When it was released, 30 years ago, the album’s epic compositions helped lay the foundation for what would later become known as ‘funeral doom’ with their hypnotic, glacial tempos and sudden bursts of double kick-drum speed, titanic riffs and ethereal melodies, unintelligible Cookie Monster vocals and oppressive atmospherics that lent a symphonic quality, even without the aid of synthesizers.

And, just like the album title says, the group was all about pushing musical boundaries, since ‘transcendence’ is defined as “the quality or state of extending the limits of ordinary experience,” while ‘peripheral’ “relates to the external boundary or surface of a body.”

In layman’s terms, or at least my chosen terms in another review, theirs was “a sound built to vibrate and loosen the viscera of its hapless victims with razor sharp riffs and subterranean tones.”

Sure enough, noteworthy emissions like “The Tree of Life and Death,” “Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory,” and “Excoriate,” trafficked in surprisingly cerebral lyrics, well worth reading, even as the surrounding, mercilessly grim and suffocating music appeared determined to destroy the listener’s body!

“A Burial at Ornans” and “The Spirit of the Tall Hills,” while less distinctive, are both heavy beyond belief, and yet the anomalous gothic interlude, “Nightside of Eden,” features guest vocals from a pseudonymous young lady credited simply as I’da.

Finally, comes the album’s -- and maybe the band’s -- signature cut, “Cerulean Transience of All My Imagined Shores,” which had already appeared in an earlier guise on the previous year’s Dusk EP, and here gained extra heft from the double bass of Paul’s brother Tony Mazziotta, though nothing else is known about these two collaborators.

Come to think of it, little more was ever heard from band principals Gallina, Kells, Skarajew, and Paul Mazziotta, who all but vanished from historical record, except for brief associations with lesser known bands like Inverloch, Feralian, Wurms, and an ambient folk project called Trial of the Bow. 

What is known for certain is that dISEMBOWELMENT cast a very tall shadow, beyond their premature demise, and every funeral doom band that followed owes something to Transcendence into the Peripheral, whether they know it or not.

p.s. -- Some of these words hail from my All-Music Guide biography of dISEMBOWELMENT and a Loudwire article I can no longer locate online. 

Solothus: Realm of Ash and Blood (2020)

After gamely “checking out” a few of today’s god-awful, commercially-oriented generic metal bands (Spiritbox, Siamese, etc.) on the recommendation of a “friend” who reads Revolver Magazine, I was reminded of another friend’s far more welcome suggestion that I “check out” Solothus.

The Finnish quintet’s third long-player, Realm of Ash and Blood, arrived through the exceptionally reliable 20 Buck Spin in 2020, and I was immediately gripped by its hybrid doom metal wonders/horrors, as recorded in aptly named studios like Desolate Dungeon and Sounds from Below.

Well, Helsinki, anyway, far as I can tell ...

Solothus formed there in 2007 and issued their first demo, Ritual of the Horned Skull, in 2011, followed by their official full-length debut, Summoned from the Void, in ‘13, and the sophomore No King Reigns Eternal in ‘16 so, yes, I’m a little late to this party -- I mean funeral.

But hang on just a second, because typical fare (on this LP -- I’ve yet to investigate its predecessors) such as “Father of Sickness” and “Chasm of Shattered Bones” actually rises out of the murkiest depths with a sound that’s pretty evenly balanced between funeral doom and less extreme death/doom.

In fact, it’s primarily vocalist Kari Kankaanpää’s laborious, bowel-loosening, sub-human rumbles that drag the album’s minority, ten-minute epics, “The Gallows’ Promise” and “A Rain of Ash,” down to funeral doom’s oppressively lightless and claustrophobic abyss.

Meanwhile, his bandmates, Veli-Matti Karjalainen (lead guitar) and Sami Iivonen (rhythm guitar), rarely hesitate to flash their melodic auroras across the starless sky (and really light it up on the melancholy interlude “Last Breath”), while Tami Luukkonen (bass) and Juha Karjalainen (drums) frequently pound into third gear with death/doom’s more dynamic, twin kick-drum tempos.

Then there are the album’s twin standouts, “The Watcher” and “Below Black Waters,” which find Solothus encroaching upon a downright infectious, gothic death metal clarity, that reminds me of their exceptional countrymen Swallow the Sun, or Sweden’s Mammoth Storm.

At all times, Solothus’ tasteful mastery of these dark metallic forces is never in doubt, and while there’s nothing here I’d dare call revolutionary -- or even evolutionary -- Solothus’ utter disdain for commercial concerns makes Realm of Ash and Blood a victory of both musical creativity and integrity.

Meaning that only a lack of time or short-term, middle-age memory loss will stop me from “checking out” Solothu’s first and second albums, while doing everything I can to politely avoid those abhorrent ‘Revolver Bands.’