With Suicide Sex Pact, Tampa’s Servants Of The Mist have released a half hour of devastating doom that’s just as fatal as its title.
First track 'Absence' opens with a slurred sample of creepy Christian classic ‘Jesus Loves Me‘,
also recently used by dearly-departed UK doom fiends Ishmael on their
track ‘Buried With Fingers Crossed’; whether it’s being sung by a
children’s choir or a drunken depressive, the effect is just as
chilling. Why do those weak enough to need the Christian crutch take
comfort from lines like "Little ones to him belong – they are weak, but he is strong"?
I will never grasp the complicit surrender of self to a fictional
character just to give people an excuse for their pathetic, weak-minded
actions. That docile servitude, indoctrinated since birth as the sampled
song proves, has been exploited to nefarious ends for millenia by now,
and is still given free reign to continue. Baffling.
The sample draws to a close, replaced by the piercing feedback that
has been a genre staple ever since a group of New Orleans miscreants
first started to Hate God back in the late ’80s. Guttural growls over
distortion and feedback is not a new formula by any means, but the
Servants choke the life out of it regardless. What sets them apart is
that they sound truly miserable, and by the time the track lumbers to an
end you’ll have felt every damn ounce of their weight upon your
shoulders. I think that depressive atmosphere is what attracts me to
this particular strain of heavy; there’s no better soundtrack to
wallowing in your bad decisions, and realising that life is a
disappointment.
With this release, Servants Of The Mist may not be
reinventing the wheel, but they do give it a few more screeching spins
on its rusted axle. Highly recommended if you like your doom despondent,
and your samples unsettling.
Read my full review of this release over at The Sleeping Shaman...
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