Rating: 8.8
Country: Netherlands
Genre: Doom Metal
Record Label: Solitude Productions
Release Date: 2007
Track list:
1. Chained To The World
2. Serpento
3. Maelstrom
4. Darius II
5. Looking Into The Makers Eyes
6. Eternal Crawl
7. Waiting To Die
Total playing time 49:18
Band Website: Heavy Lord |
Heavy Lord - Chained to the World
Steven - lead vocals & bass
Jeff - guitars
Wes Lee - guitars & background vocals
Walter a.k.a. 808 - drums
I was instantly sold by this band's name. It's the sort of name a five-year-old might have recommended if asked to name what was roughly described to him or her as a particularly heavy band. On the basis of their image alone, you probably know what to expect: bluesy sludge doom, the kind that worships the template of Sleep, Down, and most fundamentally/obviously, classic Black Sabbath at their most dismal.
What makes Heavy Lord so heavy is that they understand the importance of pacing and tension. They give their songs great deal of space with loooong buildups, so when the lumbering framework lunges into those uptempo elephant rampage bits, it genuinely feels as if the band is throwing their weight around. Which isn't to say the album merely cycles between ponderous and violent; consider the song "Looking Into the Maker's Eye", wherein the focus is the elegant harmonic interaction between the main riff and its counterpoint. Draped in colorful blues leads, it's quite profound in its simple beauty.
Much like the musical progression of their stoner brethren Electric Wizard, instead of still attempting choking your ears to death with gallons of tarblack sludge, a sudden sense of relative sobriety has shifted their attention from sprawling sonic headfucks to bludgeoning grooves, with even their wasted 10+ minute epics seeming more calculated and song-oriented than usual. The slow-burning melodic bridge in the first song alone is evidence enough that Heavy Lord have not forsaken hard rock in their descent into tectonic doom. Furthermore, this sudden clarity has led them away from the "go-nowhere vocal patterning's cool cuz it sounds like we're hiiiiighhh" standard of stoner metal and into belting out actual hooks (albeit in a harsh, snotty drawl -- more on that in a bit); that this undeniable pop sensibility juxtaposes so gracefully with the band's juggernaut riffing is irrefutable evidence of their talent.
The guitar tone's sufficiently thick, with plenty of booming low-end. I have very little to complain about in the area of sound quality, although it is a little uninteresting. I miss the days of Dopethrone when the production of an album, if fucked up enough, could practically serve as its own instrument.
What is destined to be most controversial about this album is its rabid vocal performance, which favors a series of obnoxious, sneering howls to singing as we know it. It's a bit off-putting at first, and hints that the band may listen to as much punk rock as doom, but I ultimately don't consider it detrimental to the album because the singer knows exactly when to shut up or employ clean vocals. Moreover, the more I listen to Heavy Lord, the more I begin to think it suits them, as they're not a clean band by any means.
If the vocals don't annoy you away, this is about as good as this sort of therapeutically pummeling sludge gets. Chained to the World represents definite artistic growth from a promising band who, above all, remain true to their name. If the presentation was perfectly representational of the music within, the CD would be made of lead.
November 12th, 2008
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