Blackened drone-metal duo Wolvserpent composes grim, folk-stained nightmares from the rural landscape outside of Boise, Idaho. This double-disc from Crucial Blast collects their Gathering Strengths and Blood Seed LPs, previously available only on limited-edition vinyl from Olde English Spelling Bee and 20 Buck Spin, respectively. The material has been remastered for this format, and comes in an eight-panel digi-pack with expanded artwork. Originally released under the name Pussygutt—an old slang term for the violin or fiddle—Gathering Strengths offers two massive tracks, each one a mysterious and abstract slab of twilight drift and formless, low-end blackness. “Gathering Strengths (Silence Within)” opens with eerie field recordings surrounding the slow wheeze of a clarinet drifting through the woodland shadows. As the track unfolds, the whir of prayer bowls, distant tolling bells and muted strings float in, before the calm is split apart by a billowing, black fog of metallic heaviness that crawls over the horizon, seething and roiling just behind the mournful violins and creaking, whirring drones. On “Gathering Strengths (Spirit Walker),” distant percussion and melodies gradually build into waves of rumbling doom riffage that break and subside, revealing a dreamy funeral processional, dark and beautiful, austere and apocalyptic. Blood Seed, the band’s fourth album, is featured here as a single, unbroken track. The first half of the 40-minute piece is made up of swirling folk-drone that slowly shifts into fractured, crushing heaviness underpinned by a massive, heaving sludge riff. After the drums fall away and the din dissipates into hazy clouds of amp buzz,...
2XCD $13.00
05/31/2011
Wolvserpent is the Boise, Idaho, duo formerly known lightheartedly as Pussygutt (after an old slang term for the violin or fiddle). Blood Seed, their fourth album and first under the new moniker, seamlessly melds disparate strains of experimentation into their most cohesive and cinematic vision thus far. Blood Seed has been in the works for more than a year, during which the band constantly honed and refined the material both live and in the studio. The two side-long tracks, "Wolv" and "Serpent," revel in a shimmering, dark gothic vision of rural Northwestern solitude and bleakness. The A-side sways to and fro in a perpetual trance state while violin flourishes in the background hint at the creeping menace of night's onward march toward total darkness. Soon the crushing tone of Green's guitar veers forward, blasting through the forest canopy, and the track is ensconced in the weight of massive doomed devastation and McConnell's militaristic percussive punishment. The B-side summons the howling wolves before stretching out into the doom riffage of the year, like a warped Kyuss cassette submerged in a watery grave. These are the ghosts of the uncivil dead. One of the most creative, talented and unheralded acts on the 20 Buck Spin roster, Wolvserpent emerge from their self-imposed isolation to spread the mortuary drape over the entire US throughout October when they embark on their first major tour. In its physical manifestation, Blood Seed will be an LP-only release, limited to a scant 500 shiftable units. Don't sleep on it.
LP $16.50
10/05/2010
MP3 $9.90
10/05/2010