You want cult? You got it. Fancy a two track split release on 180 gram vinyl only, limited to 1500 copies only? You got a boner for your stoner or room for more doom? Well, jump on board captain, for a heavyweight ride into all things occult and doom.
That both Cough and The Wounded Kings have both made waves in the doom community in the last year or so is not seriously in dispute. This is not a fun release; there is nothing “kooky” or light hearted about this split, and the title isn't at all ironic in its scope. Beginning with a challenging journey through a torturous soundscape of distant screams and opium fuelled riffs, Cough produce “The Gates of Madness”. Less a track and more a fully fledge voyage through fractured psyche, this showcases all of the various and multi faceted aspects of their musical oeuvre. I once spent a fortnight in a bad balloon, out of my head on triple sod and yellow Bentines and ending up on a quack candle. This is the aural equivalent of that particular episode – harsh screams, incredibly laboured, crawling dirty riffs and the ballistic ringing of cymbals like the aftermath of nearby artillery fire. There are sections when the relative insanity give way to big, filthy Electric Wizard swinging riffage and drugged out bluesy wah-wah workouts, providing a short, brief episode of relative lucidity to the bad-come down hate fuelled doom.
“Curse of Chains” sees the return of supremely esoteric progressive doom mongers, The Wounded Kings, who last blew me away with their stellar “The Shadow Over Atlantis” release from earlier this year. A chilling, tolling organ sound and simple, if effective riff is repeated in an almost hypnotic chant like manner to introduce this hymn to the uncanny. The same fluid, ethereal vibe to their traditional take on the doom template as was evident on their last album is present here, and all the better for it. With more time and space to play with, this song takes on an almost religious atmosphere, a riff becoming repeated to the point of ritual, and the mid-to-slow tempo working at such a pace as to induce a trance like appreciation of the music. Once the vocals finally arrive, an echo laden set of exhortations to the other side, their delivery sounds nothing less than a sermon from a grand magus. Once the organ breaks through, things get frankly weird. A big, psychedelic wig out ensues, spiralling desperately out of control and into the void, until all is silence.
The antithesis of easy listening in one ultra collectible package? Yup. But more than that, both of these songs are in their own right spectacular, whether for a pharmaceutically fuelled road trip through every bad memory you ever had, or a black candlelit ritual summoning. Poseurs need not apply...
http://www.myspace.com/cough666
http://www.myspace.com/thewoundedkings2
