Black Tar Prophet | Facebook | Twitter | Bandcamp |
Iron Gavel | Facebook
Released on September 16, 2016 via Broken Limbs Recordings
Want good music? Do you think lyrics and vocal attenuation sometimes get in the way of your appreciation of a record? Try Broken Limbs Recordings’ latest doom offering featuring Tennessee’s Black Tar Prophet and Pennsylvania’s Iron Gavel. Roaring vocals make a lot of sense for most heavy bands but these two just rock out the jams with nary a hissed, rasped scream or guttural growl. Spoken word samples may surface briefly on Black Tar Prophet’s side of the split, but that’s not a vocalist yelling, “Give it to me, baby,” in the very least. The spoken word samples simply work, and by the time Iron Gavel gets to their end of the proceedings, the doom jams just reach another plateau. Hooray, Broken Limbs!
Black Tar Prophet is quite a find. They use heavy discordant bass lines instead of rhythm guitar if my ears are to be trusted. It’s just bass and drums providing massive basso profundo thunder to your Saturday morning jogs if you care to copy this to your iPod. Your earphones might strain the habit some, but speakers backed up with a 200 watt subwoofer make a more effective sound system for this side of the split. Then, knock out the subwoofer altogether and enjoy the guitar grit on Iron Gavel’s side of the release. Splendid, Broken Limbs Recordings, splendid!
Like strange percussion music, Black Tar Prophet at times bashes the tom-toms together with washes of discordant bass. Quite like a mystical experience during a séance, Black Tar Prophet shines when they slow things down to a crawl and beat the fill-ins for good measure. Their four tracks are solid and this split is a novelty item plus, plus. Iron Gavel don’t speed things up much either, but when they add a little more gusto to the tempos, they come up with highlight track, ‘Shroud’ – a blistering guitar bombast layered with effects and features sloppy but wonderful histrionics.
These two bands seem to like the slow brimming build-up of an insane chord transition depicting society’s end as we know it and ushering in a new age of chaos and depravation worth communicating through music, so I suggest you empty those piggy banks worth of quarters and dimes and buy this record before it sells out.
For me, there are no clear-cut winners on this split because it’s a solid tie for first place. Broken Limbs Recordings was also responsible for my favorite split of the year featuring Fister and Teeth, so it comes as no surprise that they follow it up with a split featuring two of the most original-sounding bands in heavy music. Want a review you can digest in a minute and still love the record you come up with? This review barely makes the cut at 500 words but spices the stew with some chili peppers worth the price of admission. Namely, one Black Tar Prophet and one Iron Gavel back to back for your musical Helicon.
