Praise for Dark Castle‘s Surrender To All Life Beyond Form from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records: Latest blast of psychedelic avant doom from this Floridian boy / girl duo, apparently often referred to as the doom metal White Stripes, based we assume entirely on the boy guitarist / girl drummer lineup, cuz sonically this is miles away from the Stripes’ bluesy stomp. Instead, these two whip up a swirling, noisy, progged out, psychedelic sort of doom, which really is only classified as doom, because of the downtuned chugging, and slow-ish tempos.
But the songs here are not slo-mo sludgefests, or funereal drags, these songs are furious tangles of wild guitar freakouts, of twisted effects drenched melody, of howled vitriolic vokills, of crashing chaotic drummage, and yeah, there are certainly stretches of plodding doomic crush. But even there things are not strictly doomy, the guitars sound warped and woozy, effects everywhere, the ambience seeming to melt in some sort of lysergic haze, the duo transformed into a lurching, lumbering doom-ed deity, sonically smiting all who stand in their way.
The guitars constantly flit from crunchy distorted metallic buzz, to effects drenched warble, to slippery spidery squiggle, the drums following suit, the arrangements and structures seeming to continuously mutate, flecked in various places with chanted chorale like vocals, pulsing new wave synths, thick low end rumbles, even programmed drums. ‘To Hide Is To Die’ sounds almost like a metal version of the current John Carpenter / Goblin worship, and has us sort of hankering for a whole record of metalwave retro-giallo-doom.
But the next track slips right back into the duo’s gnarled prog-psych-doom, before finally finishing things off with a super strange chunk of piano driven ultra distorted dirge, haunting, and cinematic, everything blown out and warped, harsh vox draped over the top, a pounding, minor key miserablist abstract doom lament, the perfect finish to a fucking killer record, that’s fast becoming one of our new faves…
Features guest spots by all sorts of underground metal luminaries including Mike Scheidt from YOB, Blake Judd from Nachtmystium, Nate Hall from U.S. Christmas, and Parker Sanford from Minsk, who also recorded the record.
At 40 years old, Aquarius is the oldest independent record store in San Francisco. We try to only carry music we love, and we’re always searching for more new, cool, weird and wonderful music. All of which we then share with you, our loyal customers.
Tags: Album of the day, Aquarius Records, Dark Castle, profound lore, Surrender to All Life Beyond Form
This entry was posted on Monday, June 6th, 2011 at 3:07 am and is filed under 2011, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
This album is awesome! Great licks. Stevie’s vocals are more intense. incredible production.