ALBUM REVIEW: III: The Forest Within The Tree – Deadbird
Ten years away from the music scene pretty much amounts to an eternity. The world changes and the music industry moves on like the unstoppable machine it is so it takes a special kind of band to generate buzz after a ten year break from the studio. Enter DEADBIRD.
These particular purveyors of doom were formed in the year 2002 by brothers Phillip and Chuck Schaaf, on drums and guitar, respectively, along with guitarists Jay Minish and Alan Short with Todd Bohannon on bass and Christopher Terry on synths. However, 16 years in to the band’s existence the guys have gone through two bass players, and having now settled on Reid Raley and Jeff Morgan on four string duty the band have now been playing in this incarnation for some time and have finally penned their third full-length effort III: The Forest Within The Tree.
The first real track we get to see from this new batch of material is Luciferous Heart which kicks off with a wall of low tuned distortion from the two guitar players that could quite easily reduce speakers to dust. The layers of fuzz and rumbling bass give a dense, heavy feeling as if you are breathing in sulphur and create the perfect backdrop for the droning, mournful vocals to add to the overwhelming sense of despair.
On the flip side of this is a stunning guitar solo that sounds like something that could have leapt from the fret boards of Matt Pike or Brent Hinds themselves. The track also perfectly displays a theme that flows throughout the very veins and arteries of the entire album and that is the slow, crawling pace of the instrumentals and when you add on top of that the CROWBAR influenced singing and the hellacious, guttural backing vocals underneath you see the band reaching to a whole new realm of heaviness.
The song Heydey almost feels like a throwback to the nineties era and the grunge bands that were dominating the rock charts at the time. The lo-fi recording style of the guitars means that none of the rawness and power are diluted and the excellent ALICE IN CHAINS styled vocal harmonies provide the perfect hit of nostalgia and deliver a fantastic melodic break. The fuzz effects on the guitars and the low end basslines twin perfectly with the booming drum sound and the echoed, howling singing to keep up the relentless waves of dissonance. In the middle of the song the band produce a wonderful shift in dynamic and slam the breaks on with a haunting acoustic guitar break with an excellent, high gain guitar wailing in the background almost as if to remind you that you are not quite safe just yet. In the latter stages of the track the audience is then treated to a superb harmonised lead guitar display to make sure that the song closes on an epic scale.
Brought Low is an entirely different animal. The glacial pace of the introduction and the overall mood of the song puts the listener on edge and the vocals are haunting in their delivery. The melody hangs in the air and echoes over the top of the building instrumentals in an almost hypnotic way before the songs kicks in to gear. Kirk Windstein himself would be proud of the gravel throated, pained singing as the emotion pours out in every syllable before giving way to a brilliant MASTODON-esque chorus that sounds like something Troy Sanders could have song on their brilliant Blood Mountain. The constant shifting in gears works well in making the listener ignore just how long these songs are which is impressive in itself when you consider the incredibly short attention spans of most people nowadays.
However, the fact that the last track on the album Ending is just a minute and a half of noise is a real shame. For a band as good at writing music as DEADBIRD to take a ten-year gap from the studio and then come back and bookend their returning release with two tracks with no real content is a tragic waste of run time and feels like a real slap in the face. The material on the rest of the album is monumental in scale and the ideas that are on display are of the highest quality so there is an argument for the old cliché of ‘always leave them wanting more’ but that doesn’t stop the closer leaving a sour taste in the mouth.
Overall, III: The Forest Within The Tree is a triumphant studio return for a criminally underrated band. The songs are well written and the flow of ideas that are coming out of these musicians appears to be never ending. Here’s hoping that they do not wait another decade to commit more of their creations to tape.
Rating: 8/10
III: The Forest Within The Tree is out now via 20 Buck Spin.
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