ALBUM REVIEW: Black Candles And Gutter Scum – Pale Misery
PALE MISERY, hailing from Lafayette, Louisiana, blend black metal and crust punk to great effect. Starting out as a duo, the band didn’t fully take off until the addition of guitarist Jacob Neu, with the music coming together soon after. Their debut release, Black Candles And Gutter Scum, is a sharp shock of grating, aggressive riffs, hellish vocals and thunderous rhythms which helps to create a solid benchmark for the band to build upon.
Devoured starts Black Candles And Gutter Scum off strong, with a dark, droning intro and sparse vocals setting a bleak and oppressive tone right off the bat before giving way to a ferocious, sludgy guitar hook and chaotic, thunderous drumming, a tar thick bass line and tortured, howling vocals. It’s unerringly aggressive and speed driven, with a great, dirty sound that really helps to make the music sound incredible. The more speed orientated side of this song eventually shifts to a dense and crushing rhythmic passage, which creates a massive wall of noise that it’s hard not to love. It’s a great way to kick this album off and sets a very high bar right out of the gate. Live Fast And Die is a much punchier and melody focused piece of music, with some excellent lead guitar flourishes, that has a more classic black metal sound, with very little in the way of crust punk in its formula, although the song still has that dark, crusty tone that marked the previous song. It’s a brief, yet brilliant slab of black metal with an epic sound which expands the scope of the bands sound even further.
No Choice is a blast of blisteringly fast, caustic guitars, machine gun tight drumming and rabid, feral vocals which does, although relatively short, is great, and really ratchets up the intensity even further, making it one of the more vicious and visceral songs on this whole record. The Only Cure, with its sharp, disjointed riffs and arid, acidic vocal deliveries, is another powerful song, which manages to blend black metal and crust extremely well, without any one element dominating the sound. There’s some great tremolo picked sections counterpointed by a great, underlying groove, all of which makes this song thoroughly engrossing.
Quiet acts as a short interlude between the previous track and the final one, with minimalist, haunting ambient elements and samples making for a brief, yet brilliant, break in the overall force of this record, and setting the listener up well for the final moments of this record. Hope Is A Mistake makes use of cleaner and oppressively distorted guitar tones to build a monolithic, sepulchral sound that is fantastic from the first note to the last. The music definitely takes its cues more from sludge and crust, with a few notable black metal moments peppering the music, especially in the vocals. It’s a great song with a solid, hard rock swagger to it, and plenty of dirge-like, melancholic sections which ultimately make this not only one of the best songs on the album, but also one of its bleakest. It’s a great climax to a great record.
Black Candles And Gutter Scum is a solid record that showcases PALE MISERY‘s talents without going completely overboard. The limited length of this record helps it in the long run, as it ensures that the music doesn’t outstay its welcome. Seeing as some of the songs aren’t incredibly adventurous when it comes to writing riffs, this helps to make sure that this record remains relatively interesting. If this album had been ten or twenty minutes longer, it could have gotten tedious. It’s clear that PALE MISERY are still finding their feet when it comes to working together as musicians, and the groundwork laid down on this album sets a good foundation on which to build their future music.
Rating: 7/10
Black Candles And Gutter Scum is out now via self-release.
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