Another hour and a bit languishing in the "Macabre Rock" of Crippled Black Phoenix, a band who when we last met were reactivating old glories, offering not a celebration but a cementation that they are still here and still alive... just.
It's that lingering just that inspires their latest creation Sceaduhelm, here Justin Greaves and his cohorts don't seek to bring grandeur and flash but rather look inward at the steady collapse of a human being as time progresses.
It's a theme of exhaustion, of unease, a collected set of works from a band who are not ok but can't do much else about it rather than just survive and live one day at a time. Sceaduhelm is their most emotional record in a long time.
While more recent works were filled with rage and outward hostility, here it's introspection and personal doubt that drives the overall narrative of the record, which was recorded sporadically, deliberately so, to make sure that the songs Greaves has written could remain fluid and adaptable until the time they were recorded with whichever vocalist was the best fit.
As with all CBP records, it's a collaborative and while Greaves writes the music and plays a lot of the instruments, he is joined by co-conspirators and long time partners to flesh out his initial demos into the multi-faceted tracks you hear on the record, but there's very little grandeur this time around, it's an album of rawness and sparsity that makes for uneasy but compelling listening.
With songs that address topics like burnout, grief, surveillance, institutional violence, and damaged intimacy, there's lots to be scared of as time here is the enemy, and while they may have looked back momentarily on their last releases, they creep ever forward as individuals and as a unit, always looking to define CBP and their music as an exercise in persistence over anything else.
In the liner notes there's a thank you to Converge's Kurt Ballou and with Sceaduhelm, CBP carry a flame for the US force of nature, particularly with that raw bite of the production.
Beginning with One Man Wall Of Death (which is two men fewer than my last wall of death attempt), the record opens with a slow build, clean guitars set to samples for obscurity before the bass crashes in to make it a deafening start that fades off into some fret slides.
Ravenettes locks into steady drumbeat from Greaves locked down by Wes Wasley's bass, who is the only other person to appear on every track, the guitars shimmer and glimmer with some post punk influence, Belinda Kordic's sneering vocals an ideal kick in the face to begin Sceaduhelm properly.
The woozy Things Start To Fall Apart is the perfect debut for American artist/doom-punk Justin Storms to make his mark on the band, brings a psychedelic, blissed out quality to this post rock performance piece that thrives on conflicting atmospheres.
For Ryan Patterson's first mark on the album, No Epitaph, we have the biggest 'band' yet Rene Misje and Andy Taylor joining for guitar as Iver Sandøy gives extra percussion with melotron and synths brought in to join the dulcet baritone of Patterson for an apocalyptic Western soundtrack.
It wouldn't be a CBP album if there's wasn't a little borrowed from Pink Floyd and No Epitaph does so liberally in the middle, like the bastard son of Morricone and Waters as it segues into frantic The Precipice.
Emotion is wrought here with shouts of "one step away from the void" as The Void brings more samples over instrumental dissonance, Lucy Marshall contributing the spectral synths, hanging around for off keel dirge of Hollows End, where you definitely understand that these songs were written by Greaves specifically to fit one of the trio of vocalists.
So much that it would sound odd if one of the others had sung it. The grungy Hollows End is followed by the grumbling, deep space, trip hop of Dropout where a Kaosolator is employed to make it properly fuzzy.
I talked about Sceaduhelm not being as incendiary or grandiose, but that for me makes it a more interesting album, you can feel the humanity, in it, the passing of every second filled with pain and humility. Even when they get rocking, with tracks such as the gothy post punk of Vampire Grave, it's never over the top.
Complexly arranged, Robin Tow adding percussion this time, but never too stately, rather grounded and fragile. Storms slithers back on Colder And Colder another slice of alt-Americana or maybe anti-Americana. Under The Eye, plays at being a ballad, although more of a Nick Cave murder ballad, instilling a sense of disquiet and distrust about our constant surveillance and how that can be exploited.
The final two tracks on the record are two of the most potent. Tired To The Bone is one that resonates with me, right at the moment, it even moves at the same pace I currently do, as Belinda croons it's a song that "weighs heavy".
A dreamy apparition of a spectral load that covers your whole body, leading it's way into 8 and half minute closer Beautiful Destroyer which is the first proper duet. Though more of a confliction with Patterson and Kordic sharing the vocals on a brooding, bold, final moment, that paints a vivid picture of times ravages.
In addition to the 12 originals there's three covers on the special editions as they put their spin on A-Ha's Manhatten Skyline, False Prophet's Invisible People and That’s When I Reach For My Revolver from the film Mission Of Burma.
Maybe looking back to their first albums was a good thing as Sceaduhelm, feels like CBP pre Crafty Ape, an experimental collective of musicians creating personal, introspective music. Pink Floyd once mused "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way" and while CBP have always been a multinational outfit, and this record is not always quiet.
Maybe looking back to their first albums was a good thing as Sceaduhelm, feels like CBP pre Crafty Ape, an experimental collective of musicians creating personal, introspective music. Pink Floyd once mused "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way" and while CBP have always been a multinational outfit, and this record is not always quiet.
Sceaduhelm dwells in that same sense of suffering in silence, that things may not always get better and if they do it won't be a change in itself just and acknowledgement of a change that is needed.
I'm getting older, you are too, I've definitely been feeling it recently and god it's depressing, let Crippled Black Phoenix's Sceaduhelm be the soundtrack. 10/10
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