Originally conceived as a solo project by Karl Simon in 1998 in his home town of Indianapolis, Indiana, The Gates of Slumber are one of those bands that carry the heavy packages of doom metal like nothing you’ve ever heard before. I first became aware about this band when reading about them on the Rise Above Records website and then I completely forgotten about them. Until now.
Picking up where they had left off after their fifth studio album The Wretch in 2011, their sole self-titled release on the Svart Records label back in 2024, is a return to form. It had also been 11 years since Jason McCash; guitarist and bassist of the band had passed away due to a heroin overdose and Karl felt after what had happened that he wouldn’t reform the band. But in 2019, he reformed the group featuring the return of drummer Chuck Brown and new bassist Steve Janiak.
Despite the line-up drummers, and the passing of Bob Fouts and Jerry Clyde Paradis, The Gates of Slumber are not backing down without a fight. Mind you, I’m very new to the band’s music, but putting this album on, is like a flaming fire that’ll never go out. Their arrangements on this bad boy, are this eruptive cannon blast that’s waiting to hit at any second.
From the moment ‘Embrace The Lie’ begins with a drum-like intro then walking into the Masters of Reality-era with a brutal slowed-down punch, thanks to heavy riffs, bass lines, and Simon’s vocal styles, sending listeners into the wonderland of terror that’s about to unfold. We’re not talking about Sabbath, but stronger vibes of Candlemass, Pentagram, and Beastmaker into the fold.
Janiak’s bass intro behind ‘We Are Perdition’ becomes this hypnotic stance where you feel Simon’s alarming riffs coming at you as if they’re in your command to do their duty to order the listener by putting them in this trance and see what will happen next. ‘Full Moon Fever’ features this brutal awakening to happen.
Its almost as if The Gates of Slumber are pulling in this dance of the macabre that’s unfolding to dance on a dangerous tight-rope in the middle of the Grand Canyon. Your job, is to keep on dancing and never stop until the rope is cut. Simon growls in his vocal styles knowing he has the knife, ready to cut the rope at any second, but transforms into this vicious, snarling beast, ready to eat massive loads of human flesh like there’s no tomorrow.
And we ain’t talking about the godforsaken, bullshit Twilight franchise, we’re talkin’ about An American Werewolf in London and The Howling rolled into one. The music fits the transformation and the terror unfolding in front of the viewers eyes, not knowing the chaos and destruction that leads up to the shocking climax until its tragic end by fading off into the sunset.
Simon brings in the big guns with a powder-keg exploding in front of the listener’s eyes behind the track ‘At Dawn’. How brutal can you get for the Corpses to rise, ready to attack massive cities and cause a Zombie invasion. But this ain’t The Walking Dead, this is the Slumber’s nod to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead with an alternate soundtrack to spread massive amounts of gorefests like you’ve never seen before.
Steve comes marching in with his rumbling bass tones for ‘The Fog’ to appear. The Gates of Slumber know their love of the Horror genre very well. So, imagine the monk-like choirs Simon channels for the smell of death and decay unfolding in the terrorising city that’s become a wasteland.
But it’s almost a nod to the graphic novel of Gail Simone’s dystopian thriller Leaving Megalopolis. A combination of Watchmen meets The Walking Dead. A post-apocalyptic nightmare of the Superheroes that were once the true mechanism of making the city safe in America, but something went horribly wrong as they become homicidal maniacs. And that’s what this track is almost a sync to the story, understanding that getting out of the city, is the hard part.
Closing track ‘The Plague’ is where the bloody aftermath has occurred. It becomes this gruesome scenery that the Slumber plays off, knowing the damage has been done with dire consequences. The intro reminded me a bit of Electric Wizard’s ‘Venus in Furs’ for a brief moment from their Black Masses album as Simon rises from the tomb, delving into the decay, the situation, and where do we go from here. Once Brown unleashes massive amounts of ammo from his drum kit, you know it’s going to be a climatic showdown to bring everything to a standstill, then returning back to the nightmarish scenery as we ask ourselves, what happens next?
All in all, The Gates of Slumber are back in full swing. And this here, is a skull-crunching, powerful return for a band that is keeping the legacy of the genre alive and running. And if you are new to this band, this is a great way to start to see what you’ve been missing for the past few years.
