(written by Islander)
The Polish band Loathfinder made their recording debut with a 2017 EP (deliciously titled The Great Tired Ones), and then followed that two years later with the Aspects of Oblation split with Alaska-based Druj. Now at last they are on the verge of releasing their first album, Broken Branches and Torn Roots, through Godz Ov War Productions.
Our own Andy Synn reviewed that 2017 debut EP and described it as “hideously heavy and gloriously grim Blackened Death/Doom,” offering up “four tracks of bone-grinding riffs, putrid vocals, and suppurating, suffocating grooves, which seem purposefully designed to ruin your day.” He also wrote:
Yet as disgustingly dirty (love that guitar tone) and remorselessly gloomy as the band are, there’s a real method to their madness, above and beyond the compulsion to simply wallow in sonic filth…. All in all this is one hell of a nasty piece of work, and one which thoroughly deserves your time and attention.
But roughly 8 years have passed between the EP and the forthcoming album, long enough that even early fans of the band may wonder whether, and if so how, their music has changed over the interim. You’ll get your answers today as we premiere a full stream of Loathfinder‘s full-length debut.
Loathfinder chose to open Broken Branches and Torn Roots with the album’s longest song, the nearly 10-minute “Grey Pilgrimage“. This gutting extravagance could be considered a brazen announcement by the band that 8 years haven’t tempered their auditory ruthlessness in the slightest, but it also quickly reveals other chilling facets of their music as well.
The song’s overture quickly clubs and terrorizes listeners, inflicting percussive punishment, mangled chords, insane screams, and a general mood of bleakness and cold-hearted hatred. But very soon the music shifts, taking listeners into a ghostly netherworld of primitive tumbling drums, eerily ringing and sizzling notes, and fanatical proclamations.
Harrowing roars, scathing riffage (with HM-2 levels of distortion), and spleen-rupturing bass-lines follow, accompanied by neck-slugging beats and doses of even more rabid howls and berserk screams – but the band don’t leave behind those ringing and writhing notes of skin-shivering eeriness, which are as piercing in their tones as the riffage is brutally mangling.
The band also introduce feverishly moaning leads and brontosaurian stomps, as well as dismal ringing harmonies, guillotine-like drum-blows, and new zeniths of vocal blood-spray.
The song is so daunting, unsettling, and unearthly that it seems like an audio excursion across the river Styx, and it proves that Loathfinder have gotten even better at creating the kind of “hideously heavy and gloriously grim Blackened Death/Doom” that they first revealed on that long-ago EP.
But with the very next song, “Difference“, they cast aside the opener’s doom-stricken pacing and surge into a blast-driven firestorm of fury, drenching the listener in waves of searing riffage. As the song proceeds, galloping punk-ish beats trade places with the blasting, joined by slashing and miserably contorting fretwork. There’s still no holding back in the vocal department — it’s still unhinged — and the guitar-leads wail like tormented spectres. The song sounds both demented and desperate.
Those two tracks — the album’s longest one and its shortest one — make for a tremendous (and tremendously scary) one-two punch to launch this 43-minute record. Over the course of the album’s remaining five songs they continue their tour of auditory netherworlds and nightmares, of hells below and hells on earth, continuing to blend corrosive and soul-sucking deathly doom with black metal tirades of scorching fury.
They also continue spicing up their horrifying excursions in a multitude of ways. Rumbling tribal drums and cold, glittering guitars enhance the terrors of “Peel It Off Me“; warped bell-like chords of utter misery cry out above the merciless mid-paced war-stomp of “Dead Dogs“; a convocation of fretwork wraiths seems to convene in the midst of “Above the Water“, along with wild fanatical yells, near-singing, blistering black-metal warfare, and tremendous musical waves of blood-congealing grandeur.
“Flies Know First” actually rocks out from time to time, but allows a craggy and musing bass to lead listeners into a creepy musical house of mirrors, further guided by theatrical spoken words (crazed, to be sure) and augmented by warped, calliope-like leads. And at last, the title song pulls listeners into perhaps the record’s deepest abyss, with bowel-loosening grooves, baritone spoken-vocals that chill the flesh, and a slippery and slithery guitar solo that’s decidedly paranormal in its aura.
Throughout the album’s hellish travelogue Loathfinder maintain a bone-smashing low-frequency heaviness and vocals that really have to be heard to be believed — expressions of rage and ruin that span a wide range of mind-lost monstrosity.
To repeat a word from above: The entire album is a decidedly paranormal experience, providing contrasts and complements among piercing, spectral guitars, ruinously abrasive riffage, viscerally powerful low-end grooves, and sanity-shattering vocals. It’s scary as hell but impressively crafted to keep listeners rapt in their attention from beginning to end — and it does that very successfully, so much so that Broken Branches and Torn Roots is likely to find its way onto more than a few year-end lists.
Now, listen:
Broken Branches and Torn Roots was mixed and mastered by the esteemed Stephen Lockhart, and it features cover art by Mirella Jaworska.
Godz Ov War will release the album on May 30th, in a variety of formats: 12″ gatefold vinyl LP (150 copies), jewel-case CD with a 12-page booklet (400 copies), and cassette tape with an 8-panel j-card (35 copies), as well as digitally. Apparel is on offer too.
PRE-ORDER:
https://tinyurl.com/order-loathfinder
https://godzovwarproductions.bandcamp.com/album/broken-branches-and-torn-roots
LOATHFINDER:
https://loathfinder.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Loathfinder
https://www.instagram.com/loathfinder/