With The Dead

Debut album from a group of old men, including Tim Bagshaw and Mark Greening of Electric Wizard, and singer Lee Dorrian ex-Cathedral and Napalm Death. While hardcore and speed metal are perhaps a young man’s game, With the Dead prove that doom only improves with age. It’s as if all the happiness, joy, and optimism has been drained out of all three of them, and they’re just left with a miserable acquiescence to the rottenness of the world. The sound is super heavy, simple, plodding, a constant enveloping mud bath. Terrific!

FCC Clean (I think). Faves: 4, 1, 6

1. Slow, certain, no messing around. Tough.
2. Sort of 6/8, vocals sound really angry, aggressive song.
3. Slower, more melodic, has some really interesting “slow down” sections
4. “Living with the dead”. Super repetitive, bludgeoning, gets quiet but then gets loud again with a kind of Shepard Tone (endless descending glissando) of howling
5. Mid-tempo, has some kind of whistely flanging sound
6. Very slow, pained, stumbling and dragging.