ALBUM REVIEW: Funeral Blues – The Crooked Whispers
Coming together from the North and South American continents, THE CROOKED WHISPERS formed in the midst of the 2020 pandemic. Influenced by BLACK SABBATH, VENOM, LUCIFER’S FRIEND and Anton LaVey‘s The Satanic Mass, the American/Argentinian quartet create evil and filthy sludge metal that stands as an emphatic ode to the shadowy darkness. Their self-proclaimed satanic psych doom won them Best New Band at the 2021 Doomed And Stoned Awards, and they were handpicked by Ozzy Osbourne’s bassist Blasko. Following on from their 2020 debut album Satanic Melodies and 2021’s Dead Moon Night EP, the band’s sophomore album Funeral Blues continues their penchant for grim riffs and satanic mysticism.
Since their inception in 2020, THE CROOKED WHISPERS have had a strong direction and distinct sound. With musical backgrounds in traditional doom, psychedelic doom and death metal, the band’s members are all well versed in creating evil and gritty riffs. With this rich metal background, the band bring together a plethora of elements to create truly sinister, sludgy riffs. With their fanatic focus on evil, they weave tales of horror and demons across the eight tracks of Funeral Blues. Delivered with chilling black metal style vocals, this is a bludgeoning album.
However, and somewhat sadly, that is pretty much it. In comparison to the band’s previous releases, Funeral Blues feels like a case of rinse and repeat. Despite THE CROOKED WHISPERS‘ diverse metal background, the album is disappointingly one dimensional. With some areas being all out sludgy doom, some riffs feel like they’re ready to erupt into death metal fury or black metal tremolo picking madness, which in turn makes the album sound a bit confused with where it wants to go. The band’s debut, Satanic Melodies, laid down a solid riff foundation and began to formulate interesting psychedelic and atmospheric sections. The songs felt ritualistic in nature, as if you were present at an Anton LaVey ritual, and seemed more in line with the band’s conceptual vision.
This sadly seems to have been abandoned on Funeral Blues, and as a result the album lacks depth. As the album progresses the songs become indistinguishable, as they all follow a similar formula that fails to bring any significant dynamic variation to keep you interested, despite the occasional sharp, bluesy solo. Vocally the album lacks power and sounds weak in comparison to the mammoth sludge sound the rest of the band are producing. On a few songs, more specifically Stay In Hell, Anthony Gaglia’s unique vocals feel like a parody of MAYHEM’s Attila Csihar, which is incredibly distracting as it feels out of place with the sinister sludgy vibe that the band are going for. Elsewhere, the backing vocals on the album’s title track sound strange and cat like, which breaks your immersion in the previously established atmosphere of the song.
The album does have some redeeming qualities, THE CROOKED WHISPERS sound more cohesive in their performance. The riffs are tighter and feel more structured in comparison to the band’s previous releases, and there is more pronounced heaviness. This is due to the tangible influence of black and death metal that transcends the album which gives Funeral Blues a raw edge that is fuelled by viciously fuzzing distortion. Alongside the implementation of more BLACK SABBATH style blues elements, THE CROOKED WHISPERS have a strong foundation to build off of should they carry on in this direction.
The album opens up with Suicide Castle, which sets the tone for the rest of the record with a hulking slab of distortion and a slow half time groove. The majority of the album sounds like a chance meeting between BLACK SABABTH and death/doom, which is demonstrated on the aforementioned Stay In Hell, where Federico Ramos (guitars) unleashes a soaring blues solo. The title track follows a similar template, while When Nothing Is Left brings in a small slice of the atmospheric soundbites that the band used in their debut album, making the song’s atmosphere and tone change in an interesting way as a result. Deathmaker and Crippled Shadow are where the album turns into a bit of a slog with your ears becoming fatigued with the lack of variation. Also Gaglia’s vocals seem to run out of steam as they lose the impact they had on the opening track. Pleasant Death and Bed Of Bones seem to blur into one and the album unremarkably finishes in exactly the same way as it started.
It is sad that Funeral Blues is a case of sophomore album syndrome. Whilst there are some redeeming elements and the band seem to be fusing their influences more cohesively, THE CROOKED WHISPERS ultimately fall flat this time around. A lacklustre album that can hopefully be rectified in the band’s next outing.
Rating: 4/10
Funeral Blues is set for release on April 7th via Ripple Music.
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