This is a first for me since I have never reviewed a split before, but when given this proposition it was too good to neglect. So without further ado here's the West Coast collaboration of Alaric and Atriarch.
First out is Alaric from Oakland, CA, with the songs Memory Assault, So Far Down and Weep. Upon seeing their name I thought of the King of the Visigoths and immediately expected to hear only goth music - I know I am a moron sometimes. Instead I am treated to a real nice version of early 80's Killing Joke mixed with a dollop of doom...and actually a pinch of goth. Not as much as I thought though. Doom is one of my favourite genres and I grew up on a healthy dose of Killing Joke. So Alaric had me from the word go.
What they bring to the table is some very cool atmospheric yet demented and punishing music...in the best possible way! They're not super fast or brutal in their approach instead they opt for a mid-tempo range that allows their insanity to run free and I love it. When you think everything is good and calm they immediately change and you feel the craziness press you down while the demons in your head are escaping. All three songs almost works like a three-chapter story depicting a truly demented person's mental sufferings. Fantastic! A great start to this split and I will definitely check out their self-titled debut that is already out on 20 Buck Spin.
Atriarch from Portland, OR, finish the album with two songs, Oblivion and Offerings. They kind of have Alaric's love of early 80's Killing Joke and doom but they add a bit of aggro-punk into the mix along with some trippy elements. That is the most apparent in their second song Offerings. Oblivion is a fast in-yer-face tune that brings forth Atriarch's punk influences. Singing-wise its almost hardcore but the music keeps it punkish, hard and raw. Offerings is a slower and longer song, it's almost pshycedelic yet they maintain their punk attitude while putting some death metal into the fray.
I like their music but it took me longer to grasp it but that doesn't matter, sometimes it takes a while for a poor ruined mind like mine to comprehend things. As long as you grasp it whether it's good music or not. Atriarch are in my ears more adventuros than Alaric by stepping out of the box more and explore more avenues that will fit into their scheme of things. Maybe that's why it took the Swedebeast some time to understand the Oregonians.
Despite their common love for Killing Joke and doom both bands are two distinct entities and move within their own spheres. However working together on this spilt they connect so beautifully in all their respective insanity. There is such a fantastic flow through all the songs that keeps everything together even though the songs wants to explode and set free the madness! 20 Buck Spin released a beauty here and, even though its a 5-track split-LP, should be regarded in it's own right. The bands have created a beast that should be unleashed to the masses....although I strongly believe the masses would crumble and fall under the weight of this sonic onslaught of dementia. Beautiful, absolutely beautiful!
Stepping foot inside of a brand new world, to most, can be a very scary obstacle to overcome, let alone facing it head on. As the newest member of The Ripple Effect, I knew that I had to review something so gigantic, so large in scale that it would take nonstop drilling of my brain to understand everything that was being fed to me. I wanted a record that would tie my hands behind my back and force feed me garbage that tastes like paradise. I wanted something so raw that my neighbors would have to call the Sebastian County Police Department and complain that the echoing disturbance coming from my house sounded like someone was being thrown around by some mysterious force. With that said, Atriarch's Forever The End was the most suitable record that I could see fit for the occasion.
As I gear up and try to prepare myself for what's about to happen while I listen to this record, I couldn't prepare myself for what actually happened. Forever The End, the debut onslaught of mayhem from this four-piece, delivers some of the most monstrous and hellbent chords in the world of Blackened Death/Doom and a very small pinch of Crust. While this record might be a shaker and a roller in the world of metal, I can't help but think that this four track behemoth of a record is anything but spiritual. Maybe not spiritual in the sense that it's praising a higher power of some kind because is definitely not the case here, but more in the sense that it completely takes the listener to another world. A world filled with outstanding gloom, dark shades of grey that litter the ground and even though the world you just stepped into seems calm, chaos reigned behind and above you as clouds started to evaporate into rain drops of acid.
Forever The End, overall, is a nasty, filthy, disgusting piece of art. Some might say those words are negative but to me, those words are the best ones to use when describing how this record feels, not sounds. Don't get me wrong, the record itself does sound disgusting, in a good way of vibes, but it also feels very filthy and muggy. The third track, "Fracture", should be the example you look at when you try to find the outrageous scum that dwells inside Forever The End. "Fracture", along with the whole record really, provides very sluggish sections that will make you feel as if you are being drowned in misery. In the past I've been very vocal and opinionated that with the majority of Blackened Death/Doom releases, the guitarist(s) need to step their game up in major ways. I may be the only one that feels this way but the bass and drums are what really make a doom record sound like it does and Forever The End is no different. The way that the drums literally vibrated the cup of water on my desk while this record was playing, blew me away. On the flip side, the drums, or what I call them, the soundtrack to Satan entering a room filled with worthless humans, also deliver on a scale that nobody can touch nor disagree with that they sound exactly what hell looks like, in a good way.
This record provides things, as mentioned above, that I really haven't felt since I listened to Meth Drinker's self-titled debut record earlier this year. The vibe you get that everything around you is collapsing into a burning pit of flames while the smell of burning flesh is heavy fogging the air in front of you. Forever The End and Atriarch both have laid waste to everything I wanted in this record. It has the atmosphere, the horrible disease ridden riffs that will make the pictures that hang on your hallway wall fall, only to shatter into tiny pieces and this overwhelming burden to just keep blasting this record until it melts, literally.
So, as I sit confused as to what I just heard from this record, yet I completely understand and latched onto everything that was thrown at me, I ponder the question to myself along with asking you, why can't every single record I come across sound like Forever The End? Simple question, right? The only answer I can give you is that most bands, to me, want to make it huge without much effort. That most definitely isn't the case with Atriarch because if I'm judging this band from this debut full-length alone, I can't see why they won't be featured in the most popular metal magazines or be put on tours with the bands they've looked up to for years. Atriarch - The one band that grabbed me by my throat the second this record started to spin.
