3 out of 5

Label: Hydra Head

Producer: Tore Stierna, Skamfer

And then at some point, Hydra Head started dropping all of these black metal lookin’ releases, with black on black art and lyrics in Swedish and scary dudes with one name like Skamfer doing the one-man gloom act from caves beneath volcanos under oceans.  …Or so the stereotype would go.  But though the packaging and overall fuck-off mystique presented by a lot of these releases (Xasthur, Bergraven) matches, at a high level, what pumps through the speakers, I’ve found it’s easy to get over my judgement once letting the discs play through once or twice, as Aaron Turner and crew’s judgements for label roster fodder are consistent – finding groups / artists whose music represents something noteworthy in whatever splinter of the genre.

Enter Skamfer, a.k.a. Heresi, who’s from some other group and gives us the groovy tagline of manic-depressive who spent some time in hospital.  Ooh, spooky and dark and you wish for man’s ruin.  But besides the etched-from-darkness artwork on the album and that lovable, unreadable black metal script, while you won’t find Heresi on top of the pops with his thrash drums and speed guitar and growling, this is – heh – a pretty surprisingly upbeat entry for Scandinavian or whatever doom metal.  Apparently the dude dropped two ‘Psalms’ on cassette or vinyl and they exist in some limited quantity in the music ether, then HH re-released this second portion on disc.  You’ll hear me, for the most part, defend a lot of releases on the label, but there are still those artists on the roster that I wouldn’t actively pursue another release for a listen, or I’d hesitate to add it to my stack if discovered while used shopping.  But I totally want to hear and own Psalm I.  While tracks like opener ‘Liothe’ are all blast beats that occasionally fall one step behind (but damn, it’s hard not to when you’re keeping that staccato pace for 6 goddamn minutes), on the whole there’s a lot of traditional rock structure going on here, and Skamf’s growl is at a nice register where you’re not laughing at how menacing he’s trying to sound but it definitely matches the aggressive tone all the same.  And satisfyingly – the mix is good.  It’s not all echoes and murk, nor is it ‘up-sold’ for loudness’ sake.  The vocals are mixed a little behind the forefront, making the constant grumble actually a good use of layering against the riffing, which is given both an icy and warm edge to it.  The gold here are the breakdowns, as they suddenly make the machine-gun pace worthwhile, select moments to break the wall of sound.

Yeah, the tracks absolutely blend together – try telling track 1 and 2 apart – but then you get to an epic track like ‘Prosairesis’ and you realize that you’re digging this noise, and you too wish you had Psalm I to scare your friends with.  Short and sweet, well played and produced, ‘Psalm II’ is just the right dose of blackness.  It doesn’t show the willingness to experiment so much as the Bergraven releases Hydra Head had me listening to, but every genre deserves straight-forward, no frills examples like this disc.