Sourvein
Will To Mangle
Southern Lord
Will To Mangle is almost too beautiful. Sourvein, at the first casual listen, seems to be sipping from the same dark well of inspiration from which many of the current vogue of Stooges-lite or stoner rock frequent, but on closer inspection, they’re bleeding, pissing and wretching into that there water. Sourvein is an ambisexual, sensory-deprived, self-mutilating heap, lashing out with a murderous rage that contrasts sharply with the more somniloquent lurches of the rhythm section. It’s as much informed by Pentagram and Khanate as it is by more sinister fare like The Melvins and even Darby Crash’s theatre of cruelty in The Germs.
I hear tell that Sourvein rose out of the ashes of some bands I really used to dig. Buzzoven? Saw them once. Singer was smashing glass over his head, bleeding and screaming. Dreadlocks, dirt and blood. 13? Great fucking band. Rocked it evilly on that Mayhem tribute record a few years back. And now with key players from each combined into one scorched-earth unit, and produced by Billy Anderson, it’s high time to run for cover.
Sourvein is doom metal to be sure, but doom metal where every single note, pulsing sluggishly like a human heart trapped in ice, is frayed and brutalized, propelled into a gray zone, like burnt hair and charred brush. There are familiar riffs and patterns, but they’ve been scorched beyond the threshold of human tolerance. The result is a sustained primal shriek that threatens to send you over the brink also, alone in a feral, yellow-eyed crouch.
Southern Lord Recordings: http://www.southernlord.com
