When it comes to black metal, I’ll admit that my tastes are incredibly particular. While I enjoy most of what Wolves In The Throne Room have released, they’re probably as close as I get to the genre proper (and even then, the purists will quickly point out that they’re an ‘atmospheric’ black metal band from the States, as opposed to ‘Trve Norwegian Black Metal’). As much as I understand that the harsh aural aesthetic created with trebly, distorted guitars and a lo-fi, minimalist production is meant to act as both a litmus test for the fandom as well as an expression of rage at organised religion or whatever, it’s just…not quite my tempo. Doom, on the other hand, is my tempo, seemingly almost scientifically engineered to my brain chemistry. So how could I go about enjoying the former? Well, like a fussy dog with a worming tablet, you take that black metal, hide it inside some funeral doom, and shove it down my throat before my dumb arse has a chance to taste anything out of the ordinary.
Enter Locusts and Honey.
While certainly a hell of a title for the staff at your local JB-HiFi / Best Buy / Tower Records et al. to fit on a label, Teach Me to Live That I Dread the Grave as Little as My Bed is the debut album from vocalist Stephen Murray (Hooden) and multi-instrumentalist Tomás Robertson (Gergesenes, Nargothrond, Urne Buriall). Though divided into six tracks, the 28-minute record plays more like one continuous piece comprised of several distinct movements, creating a soundtrack to a bleak short film that doesn’t exist. Their sound is largely fully formed, doubtless from their experience in other bands in the past, and it coalesces here in an incendiary debut.
While compared to the balance of the album, the opening “Surfeit of Lampreys” is kind of an intro track, however it certainly goes a way towards establishing mood and tone. Ethereal guitars drift over a foreboding and constantly swelling wall of noise that rises from the background, approaching like an unstoppable force, leading directly into track two.
“Leathern Cord” is a fantastic example of the band borrowing buzzing layers of harsh noise from black metal and draping it over funeral doom like a veil, completing the perfect portrait of a beautiful corpse. Murray’s snarling vocals lurk like a shark just beneath the surface of the dirge, which is as dense as it can be without becoming solid. An exhilarating (for doom) beginning to the proceedings. Everything is Noise‘s own JP Palais covered the premiere of the track’s video release, watch / read about it here.
It’s funny just how subjective taste can be, right? As someone to whom doom is pretty much a comfort blanket at this point, it can be hard to see the music as grim, bleak, or ugly as others might. To that end, while “Confraternities of the Cord” carries on the droning rumble that concluded the previous track, it isn’t long before it launches into its own funeral procession march which becomes quite bleak indeed, Locusts and Honey tipping their hand to reveal just how well they can establish mood in two and a half minutes.
“Beauty and Atrocity” is a more ethereal, droney soundscape, a breather before the record launches into its most bombastic track. “Traitor to Love” bursts to furious life, leaning heavily on the harsh wall-of-noise of black metal, pressing it into rich, deep, booming bass until the onslaught becomes oppressively good. Towards the back end of the track the deluge subsides – if just a bit – allowing the truly gnarly riff some room to breathe, and expand, and breath until it bleeds into the album closer.
“Damnation Memoriae” borrows some of the foreboding drone from the end of its predecessor to continue the sense of dread, but this gives way to a calmer movement, pensive acoustic guitar guiding us to our final resting place as the album draws to a close. And despite the record’s title, I definitely dreaded this song, and the album, coming to an end.
Despite having a name more reminiscent of a bespoke herbal remedies store on Portobello Road, the UK-based duo has nailed the strengths of the blackened doom formula right out of the gate. Combining the rich bass, slow tempo, and repetition of funeral doom with the heavily distorted guitars, screeching vocals, and general wall-of-noise tone of black metal, Locusts and Honey have cross-pollenated the harsh natures of both subgenres into a glorious amalgamation, all perfectly complemented in a haunting cinematic soundscape. A chilling debut, one not to be sat on for all fans of doom, and (dare I whip this card out now), a strong contender for one of my top album picks of the year thus far.
