FOREVER DEAD,
FOREVER STONED
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| Cover artwork by Hunter Hancock. |
Few
artists have been able to articulate the unnameable dread of horror better than
Francisco Goya. He is perhaps best known
for his ‘Black Paintings’, of which “Saturn Devouring His Son” is arguably the
most well-known (it even graces The Obsessed’s ‘Lunar Womb’ re-issue album
cover). But my favorite is “The
Colossus” (I recognize that the painting has recently been re-attributed in
recent years to a follower of Goya’s, but that is also in dispute. To me, it remains a Goya original). The painting features an unclothed man
looming behind a green landscape in an apparent mood of rage, tiny
peasants flee in the foreground. What
the artist shows us so clearly in this work is that horror can be a matter of
perspective. Put the figure in the
foreground and the scene changes to what may be a caravan of death heading
toward our now defensively postured “giant”.
Phoenix, Arizona based doom trio Goya live in the same world that we all
do. Their perspective, though hardly
unique, informs every note, every syllable of their music and it’s apparent
that what they see is a melting pot of horrors even the great artist from whom
they take their name would struggle to articulate.
The
driving force behind the band is guitarist/vocalist Jeff Owens. The band’s 2012 demo featured an entirely
different lineup, aside from Owens himself of course and featured a much
different sound. It’s impossible to
escape the Electric Wizard / Sleep influence as it creeps into every crease and
fold of ‘777’, something that was merely hinted at on the band’s demo. To get a sense of the change in sound compare
the old lineup demo version and new lineup album version of the song
“Blackfire”. The vision the band
articulates so well is that unnameable dread that ultimately looms over every action
taken by man, that life is a losing battle at best and utterly hopeless at
worst, in short the essence a particularly vitriolic strain of true doom.
Owens
and company discharges vitriol like they were born to do so, which I’m sure
they were to some degree. If you did
actually bother to compare the two versions of “Blackfire” or “Night Creeps”
for that matter, you will see automatically how much dirtier the new versions
sound. The album is of far superior
sound quality to the demo, as it should be, so the ‘dirt’ or grit comes from
the performances themselves. I hesitate
to call them ‘sloppy’ performances, as little half-millisecond hesitations and
deviations make ‘angry’ seem like the more fitting descriptor. It’s that extra little build-up that makes
every strike, every strum, every accent just a half-millisecond stronger,
angrier, more meaningful. It’s dirtier
you see, and there’s a tiny little speck of rage in every pinch of dirt, always
has been.
Well
if something as beautiful as a flower can grow from a pot of dirt, then
something as diabolical as ‘777’ can also spring forth from dirt’s raging
potentiality. And make no mistake, this
is a malignant album which takes a jaundiced view of the world. Of course, as any horror fan knows, and as
Francisco Goya understood and helped us to understand, there’s beauty to be
found in all that evil. Like a flower
which grows from rage, the riffs on ‘777’ are the tits of Baphomet. The syncopated guitar / drum interplay is
undeniably gorgeous, peaking on “Necromance” (a #1 hit on the Doom Chart). The riffs are of such a quality that a song
like “Death’s Approaching Lullaby” remains hypnotic and driving even while
stretching towards 13 minutes in length.
Perhaps the magnum opus and overall mission statement of the LP is
closing track “Bad Vibes”, it’s the spike after the touchdown, the rotten
cherry on top.
If
Goya succeeded in reminding us that all living things eventually fade, die and
decay, then they have done so by creating something immortal. ‘777’ may or may not go down as a doom
classic, but to call it the most hate-friendly collection of festering riffs
since ‘Dopethrone’ may not be too great a stretch, though the band doesn’t
disguise it’s influences well enough to consider it a true classic for those
with a sense of the genre’s history. Then
again, it doesn’t appear as though they bothered to try disguising anything,
because Goya doesn’t care what I think, or what you think, or what anybody
thinks. They aren’t trying to write
doomed anthems for the world, they are in it for themselves, and though that
may sound selfish, it’s the only reason to do anything in this world, you just
have to know who you are and why you’re doing what you’re doing in the first
place to have any success at it. It
sounds to me like Goya have those things sorted out.
Highlights include: "Necromance" and "Bad Vibes"
Rating: 4.5/5
Total Run Time: 51:49
