Wednesday, December 21, 2011

LEGIONS OF CROWS - Stab Me CD review


LEGIONS OF CROWS - Stab Me CD
Funeral Rain Records
Genre: Blackened Doom
Rating: 3/5

When I saw the title of this release I was reminded of a woman I use to date years ago who had some interesting sexual fetishes but you don't wanna hear about that. Speaking of which the opening organ infused "hymm" portion on this UK doom duo's debut (say that three times fast) stabbed me in the head until the blackened rasps and short circuit sounding riffs kicked in. Of course by the second cut, "Fellating the Lamb", their intentions are made clear. LEGIONS OF CROWS are not your run of the mill church goers by a long shot but then again that's a given when it comes to extreme metal. Although I doubt they're the arsonist type since they seem to be more into throwing rotten veggies at parishioners than playing with matches. Plus the kerosene would ruin their own fancy attire. I'm grasping at cliches there if you haven't noticed. As far as their blackening of the doom canon goes there are industrial elements that clearly stand out as if this was recorded in a steel lined studio with Al Jourgensen as producer. The added keyboards also add a surreal dissonance of gothic proportions along with the spoken word poetics.

As I said earlier LEGIONS OF CROWS are a duo consisting of Attila (aka: Ian Marshall) whose responsible for keyboards, the programmed drums and the inhuman like rasping which is classified as vocals. Obviously he's using studio effects to make himself sound more like the snake from the garden of eden. The other half of this duo is someone who simply goes by the name Herod who takes care of the trudging guitar and bass rhythms. Yes for the most part Stab Me is not for anyone into the speed of tremolo picked riffs. The lion's share of the cuts are slow and methodical like torture down right. The guitar tones are crisp like the crunching of dried leaves under your feet in the Fall. By the releases halfway mark the simplicity of the bass and the drum programming starts to drag on you. Attila's use of the keyboards as both lead and background atmospheric accompaniment tends to soften the dreariness of a song like "Dull Grey". Although there are also times when they meander far too long like with the blind SABBATH worship of their namesake cut "Legions of Crows" or worse on "Bullshit Acres".

Once I got past the opening track on Stab Me I thought this was fairly interesting with the sickness of the riffs paired up with Attila's venomous serpentine vocals. Songs like "Fellating the Lamb" and "Defecate", which sounds like they're savagely raping a TYPE O NEGATIVE cut, are worth while listens. Unfortunately like I mentioned before by the halfway point the headache induced boredom starts kicking in which left me with the choice of reaching the volume control or the aspirin to relieve the pain. I believe some of this material also appeared on their 2009 demo so I'll give em the benefit of the rehash and hope any future endeavors are far more creatively enhanced to the degree where this genre packaging could believable lead.

Official: http://www.funeralrainrecords.com/


Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/legionsofcrows


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