An album of murderous proportions, as dictated to us by the Church Of Misery through Rise Above/Metal Blade has taken the fantasies of their predecessors and molded it into a continuation of their previous work for the dusk of 2013. Staying true to their facts, stalking their inspirations to know them inside out, bound and gauged to lyric sheets, backed by colossal riffs and drum beats of assault and battery, the record Thy Kingdom Scum builds into the heaviest thing I’ve heard this year.
To illustrate, ‘Cranley Gardens’ takes the British murders of Dennis Andrew Nilsen and weighs them on you like an encyclopedic, graphic novel has been dropped on your chest. The news clip bleeds into waves of psychedelic guitar like the heat of a mirage, while vocalist Hideki Fukasawa’s croaks, “Let’s make love, baaaaby!” and shakes you into submission of the bass grooves. Damn, when he sings “I’m gunna kill,” boy can he hold a note!
The Quartermass cover, “One Blind Mice” knocked it out of the park. I hate to say it when a cover outshines the original, but this song was made to be sludged out for the stoner. Maintaining the liveliness of the original in pace, wavering guitar streams of psychedelia and vocal swells, heaved up in swollen shreds led their interpretation to fit the album nicely.
Sure the serial killer theme may be a bit played out at this point but there will always be murder and there will always be music. May as well continue to press the two together and make beautiful mutilated babies, only to slaughter them again and bury them under the sludge.
9/10
Christine Hager