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Released on March 4, 2016 via Rise Above Records
Tokyo doom masters Church of Misery return with their storming new album And Then There Were None…, and while it is business as usual with the band when it comes to cranking out the trademark doom metal riffs with songs all about serial killers (this time round there are tracks about the Heaven’s Gate cult and Britain’s own Harold Shipman as well as less well known US killers such as the Bender family), but on this record there is a brand new cast of musicians creating the horror with bassist and founding member Tatsu Mikami.
For the first time in the band’s history, Mikami has teamed up with three American musicians for the album and what a line-up he has assembled. Handling vocals on And Then There Were None… is none other than Repulsion legend Scott Carlson and with Blood Farmers Dave “Depraved” Szulkin and Earthride’s Eric Little completing the formidable line-up. The new Church of Misery are out for blood on this new album.
Being used to Carlson’s brutal grind/death vocals on the seminal Horrified album (as well as on the Death Breath album from 2006), it was met with frenzied anticipation to hear how his vocals would sound on a more groovy brand of doom metal and they certainly do not disappoint. His vocals sound extremely at home over the blackened sludgey grooves that swamp each song. Tracks such as ‘Make Them Die Slowly’, ‘Confessions Of An Embittered Soul’ and ‘River Demon’ all benefit from Carlson’s deathly rasp and each song’s horrific story of the real life subject matter is told with grisly authority over the mammoth, heavy grooves that the rest of the band churn out.
It is these grooves that Church of Misery are renowned for and they do not disappoint here (especially on monster closing track ‘Murderfreak Blues’). And they are present and correct on all but one of the tracks, ‘And Then There Were None’, with only the tripped out and spacey interlude ‘Suicide Journey’ an aside to the riff led madness. As with the rest of the band’s material and subject matter, the tales of murder and mayhem are related with morbid glee, sounding like macabre narratives when recited by Carlson.
What will become of this line-up of Church of Misery after this album only Mikami knows, but hopefully this will not be the only material recorded by this line-up as they have got it spot on here. The bands heaviness and groove combined with the strong vocals of Scott Carlson and the macabre songs are a match made in hell and hearing this material live with this line-up would be a very good thing indeed.
