AMENRA "To Go On.  And Live With. Out."

Band: Amenra
Album: Mass IIII
Year: 2008
Label: Hypertension Records



AMENRA "Silver Needle, Golden Nail"

AMENRA "Aorte, Nous Sommes Du Même Sang"

Band: Amenra
Album: Mass III
Year: 2006
Label: Hypertension Records


AMENRA "Am Kreuz"

AMENRA "Le fils Des Faux"

release what you have built up here

Mgla - Exercises In Futility V

RECORDED BY BILLY ANDERSON AT LA CHAPELLE, WAIMES
MIXED BY BILLY ANDERSON AT EVERYTHING HZ, Los angeles , USA

www.facebook.com/churchofra
www.soulslayer.net

AMENRA "Dearborn and Buried"

AMENRA "Nowena I 9.10"

Omega Massif - Aura

Cough is one of those bands that you can’t not run into once you get into doom.  They will be in your face as you take your first steps into the vast, miserable ocean of the genre, and their name is very present and out there.  There are two types of bands that demand this kind of attention simply by existing: those that are hyped too much and are made out to be this big thing, and those that are this big because they have merit.

Cough falls into the second category.  The merit in their blend of the art of making misery is what sets them so high, and, for the record, Cough is one of the finest bands out there, period.  Without sliding any further down the slippery slope of fan-bias, let us continue.

At the core of Cough’s music is filth and misery.  The centerpiece of every song is the down-tuned guitars agonizingly churning out low-tempo riffs of dooooooooom - chord-slams, feedback, sludge-like lurches forward and snail-pace grooves.  The bass supports the guitar admirably.  The drumming, especially given the very low speeds at which most songs go about their business, is astonishing, as it finds a way to play with the otherwise very steady rhythms.  Another good thing is the vocals.  Admittedly, the vocals have two main modes, throaty, sort of mid-pitched screaming and the clean ‘singing.’ The clean vocals have a very good range, from doomy, stretched-out shouting to gentle croons, but the mid-pitched bellows of daemons is what sells the vocals.

“Sigillum Luciferi” is one of those albums that is impossible to break down song-by-song.  Oh, I can do it, alright, it just wouldn’t be any good. Instead, I will focus on this album as a whole, which is where my first point lies.  “Sigillum Luciferi” isn’t a collection of songs, it is an album.  It is a coherent whole and at no point do you believe you are listening to anything other than a Cough record.

The atmosphere is miserable, and I do mean the black-hue-and-haze, overbearing, no-hope-in-life, worn-out-in-a-back-alley miserable.  It’s sinister, slow darkness feels like slowly being choked and worse still, liking it.  It’s like loving a noose in its filth, and it’s delicious.  Of course, this is aided by how the riffs themselves are structured, as each one seems to have been tailor-fitted to induce as much misery as possible.  Therein, Cough’s strength appears: “Sigillum Luciferi” is a very refined, very well-thought out effort.  Each song is structured in the way each riff is structured – careful, though natural and heavy without fail.  Each section is refined into a hypnotic, nigh-ritualistic dirge made of repetition and back-and-forth between the few riffs.  This same structure applies to where the songs are placed: after the head-crushing pure beauty of “Hole in the Infinite,” for instance, we are offered solace in the lumbering, sludge-like riff and even pacing of “288 Years of Sin” which, in itself, leads to the utterly lethargic “Northern Plague.”

“Northern Plague” is followed up by a perfect example of how in “Sigillum Luciferi” each part transitions smoothly into each other, so much so that the entire song feels like the natural output of a guitar/bass/drum-strapped beast let loose in his natural habitat.  See, the fifth track, “Shallow Grave” is a case-in-point.  It begins as a doomy Cough dirge: nice monolith riff, slow pacing, but, after a few minutes, the band teases with a bit of playful groove in the riff, before returning to the starter. Then, out of nowhere, the pace suddenly hits an upper-mid-tempo and the band launches into catchy, foot-stomping grooves, and embellish this section further with a burning solo before returning to the initial riff, and then slowly degenerating that into feedback and noise by gradually slowing it down.  It’s genius!

However, for those that may think this is a riff-tastic doom-fest: sorry, but the riffs on this beast are few.  But never mind that, because here, less is undoubtedly more.  See, it’s one thing to make ten, twelve-minute songs with the same two riffs, quite another to make both count in such a way that you are left satisfied.  Returning to the earlier point about structure, the songs themselves have a peculiar quality, in that you can safely drift away from a song, let your mind waver, and it will find a way to snap you back to attention, and you won’t wonder what song you’re on.  That’s a rare and incredible feat, in my book.

A further point emerges right here.  Cough use a lot of feedback.  Hell, the opener, “Killing Fields” is about three and a half minutes of feedback cut by single chords and single drum hits.  In the other songs, like “Shallow Grave”s closing salvoes or some of “Lyssavirus,” the band use feedback to gradually eat away at the remnants of a riff until nothing is left. Their ability to refine that noise into actual riffs and doing it so naturally and so without abrasive transitions is a very good trait of this album.  Further, a convention that was present in “Ritual Abuse” also makes an appearance (in “Lyssavirus” specifically) which is to say that before beginning the initial riff, the guitar plays a stripped-down, almost test-tab version of it for a bit.  It’s a nice trick that creates a jammy impression and fits the album.

SO, OVERALL, WHY SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO THIS? Easy.  It’s one of the best doom records out there, along with “Ritual Abuse.” That’s simply it, no two ways about it.  This record is cut from a different cloth, and cut out to be well fucking worth the almost-hour (57 minutes, to be precise) that it will take from your life in the first listen, and many more almost-hours it will take by virtue of its sheer addictive properties. It doesn’t stray far from where it is comfortable, yeah, but you wouldn’t want it to, anyway. I don’t know how else I can say “perfect,” really, so stop reading this, and go listen to this album.  Go.  Now. (via doommantia.com) 


AMENRA "Aorte, Nous Sommes Du Même Sang"

CHURCHOFRA

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