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Warhorse: As heaven turns to ash
27/05/10 || Khlysty
After giving the matter long and serious thought (that is, daydreaming for about 5 seconds flat…), I came to the conclusion that doom is all about head-space. I mean, if there’s one metal subgenre that’s totally formulaic, that’s doom: it’s got slower than slow rhythms, it’s got guitars and basses than sound like horny brontosaurs, it’s got singers that screech or howl or growl about what a misery life is and, please, bro, pass me the bong/roach/needle/bottle so that I can stave off the pain. So, for the music to work, there needs to be a certain, ah, vibe to it, a certain something that’s not easily described or defined, but that, when there, creates the aforementioned head-space into which the listener can be immersed and let to wallow.
It’s this head-space that separates good doom from run-of-the-mill doom and it’s exactly this head-space that defines great doom from good doom. For example, Thergothon, for all their OTT antics, is a great doom band, as it creates with its music said head-space of cosmic despair. Burning Witch is great doom, as the music creates a head-space of self-destructive abandon. St. Vitus is great doom, as the music creates a head-space of total don’t-belong-nowhere desperation. Khanate is great doom, even if just for the unbridled, passionate hatred that radiates from their music. And Warhorse is great doom, as their music creates a slowly moving havoc of psychedelic-inspired, who’s-gonna-live-tomorrow head-space that’s in equal measures desperate, enticing and repulsive.
Coming from Worcester, Massachusetts, Warhorse tapped the rich doom vein of the past (Black Sabbath, Trouble, Pentagram, St. Vitus, The Obsessed, et al.) for inspiration, but seemed to go a little further back, to the days when there was no heavy metal to talk about, to find ideas of, ehm, embellishing their music. To me, “As Heaven Turns to Ash” is a landmark recording as it seemingly combines elements of modern doom (the snarling downtuned rumble of the guitar, the almost-unmelodious riffing, the tortured vocals, the hollow drum sound), with ideas of what constitutes heavy music laid out back in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
The basic layout of the music is what one would expect from a modern doom metal band: the guitars have a super-fuzzy, ultra-heavy sound, the bass is distorted and downtuned almost to subsonics, the vocals are raspy howls, usually buried waaaaaay low in the mix and used mainly as another part of the instrumentation and the drums sound hollow and slower than a one-breath-away-from-extinction mammoth. So, as far as the basics are concerned, everything is as it should be. The first surprise, though, comes with the first guitar solo, which is more reverbed and flanged that the law normally allows, tinting the song (“Doom’s Bride”) with a bizarre psychedelic sheen, that, surprisingly, works just fine within the premise of the track.
This trend continues throughout the whole record, with some other kinks thrown in the mix for good measure: some (pretty slow) Sabbath-via-Obsessed grooves, some acoustic detours, some more quasi-psychedelic touches here and there (e.g., a song intro with the guitar sounding sitar-like). But, the main goal of Warhorse remains the creation of total, suffocating heaviness and it’s generally successful. Sometimes the riffs sound as if ready to collapse under their own weight, but each time the band comes up with a new and interesting variation of the riff, or some other “trick” that boost the songs up with more life, achieving, thusly, the goal of creating the aforementioned head-space into which the listener can lose himself.
Warhorse didn’t last long –one E.P. later they split. But, if one likes doom in its more heavy and mind-fucking forms, “As Heaven Turns to Ash” is required material. The head-space created here by Warhorse is a huge yawning pit of blackness. It’s one’s decision whether one would plunge into it or not, but I would suggest that taking this chance may be more rewarding than avoiding it…
- Information
- Released: 2001
- Label: Southern Lord
- Website: Warhorse MySpace (fan page)
- Band
- Jerry Orne: electric bass, acoustic bass, vocals
- Todd Laskowski: lead and rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar, percussion
- Mike Hubbard: drums, percussion, acoustic guitar, piano, backing vocals
- Tracklist
- 01. Dusk
- 02. Doom’s bride
- 03. Black acid prophecy
- 04. Amber vial
- 05. Every flower dies, no matter the thorns (wither)
- 06. Lysergic communion
- 07. Dawn
- 08. Scrape
- 09. …And the angels begin to weep
