ALBUM REVIEW: Songs For Satan – Dopelord
In the depths of South East Poland lies the medieval city of Lublin. Surrounded by history from centuries worth of inhabitation, the city is a cultural bastion in Poland’s South East region. It is also the home of Polish doom heavyweights and regular heretical blasphemers DOPELORD. Over the last 13 years the quartet have been providing monstrously heavy slabs of doom that criticises the dominance of the Catholic church over their country, with pointed lyrics aimed at its oppressive methods. Now the band return with their heaviest and most fuzzed-out gospel of psychedelic sludge; Songs For Satan will propel DOPELORD into the higher echelons of global doom and wreak havoc along the way.
After an ominous and eerie introduction of owls and crows cawing into an inky black night, DOPELORD waste absolutely not time in launching you into the thick of it with a gargantuan opening riff on Night Of The Witch. The statement of intent is laid down early on, it gets its demonic claws into you and makes it clear that there’s no escape, you’re part of this deliciously devilish ritual until the final fuzzed-out note has been played.
Drenched in fuzz, laden with darkness and loaded full of wonderfully haunting imagery, Songs For Satan is an impressively sinister album. Following on from the crushingly heavy Sign Of The Devil (an album that seemed portentous in 2020 as the world descended into the grim bleakness of the pandemic), the main difference Songs For Satan has from its predecessor is the emphasis on more melodic passages that sound like anthemic psalms to the dark forces of hell. There is still DOPELORD’s thunderous trademark riffing but melodically the band seem to have opened up more.
The majority of the chorus melodies have a BLACK SABBATH-esque style to them, and with Paweł Mioduchowski (vocals, guitar)’s unique vocal tones, there are earworms scattered all over this album. Mioduchowski is bolstered by the power of Piotr Ochociński (drums), Grzegorz Pawłowski (guitars) and Piotr Zin (bass, vocals, mellotron) and together they are purveyors of a riff-pocalypse. Over the 38-minute doom masterclass, each song hammers down on you without mercy. Deep, guttural and visceral, this is the murky and dark doom with an atmosphere that thrives and intensifies as the cold nights draw in and esoteric rituals can take place.
While the majority of the lyrics take inspiration from classic cult films, 1970s rock, the occult and magical herbs, DOPELORD challenge extreme Catholicism in Poland in a defiantly creative way. Songs For Satan is contagiously enticing, its dark heretical magic is simply too alluring to resist, more so than the albums that have come before it. It also demonstrates another leap forward in songwriting as the band sound more cohesive than ever. Actively seeking to amplify the pugnacious defiance against the cultural domination of Catholicism, DOPELORD have created a vivid, enchanting and alluring album that will undoubtably draw in many new followers to their fuzz-drenched cult.
Opening up with the aforementioned introduction (simply called Intro) of owls and crows, the scene of the album is set to a dark and unforgiving night, with rampant witches using the deep, dark woods as their playground. Night Of The Witch is a humungous slab of fuzzing, snarling riffs with pounding drums that could split skulls. Mioduchowski also unleashes the earworms early on, and his vocal melodies are contagiously catchy throughout the song. The Chosen One feels like the story of someone reckoning with the voices within their head or the one chosen for sacrifice; either way the song is dark, imposing and intense. Slow, methodical, stoner riffs cast a hypnotic spell on you as Mioduchowski seems to speak to the devil through a choral style vocal delivery.
One Billion Skulls conjures up imagery of the Paris Catacombs where all the skulls are stacked and seem to go on for eternity into a black abyss. Probably the most defiant song on the album with the line “I’m spitting in the face of God”, it continues the slow, methodical heaviness but harbours a deep rooted anger that comes through in the riffs. Evil Spell ramps up the heaviness and intensity further, as the band begin to enter sludge territory, but with a hypnotic swirling riff that brings an impending sense of doom with it. Worms sounds like DOPELORD have finally unleashed the demon they’ve been teasing all album with an absolute sludge rager, the final skull crushing pummel before the gentle mellotron-led outro of Return To The Night Of The Witch.
Songs For Satan is a devilishly delectable slab of sludgy, demonic doom. DOPELORD have certainly upped the ante on their cultural defiance and delivered another monstrous album to sit alongside their illustrious back catalogue. This is the perfect album for the long, dark nights of autumn.
Rating: 8/10
Songs For Satan is set for release on October 6th via Blues Funeral Recordings.
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