Buried Treasure: I’m Not Saying I Dig Reverend Bizarre, but I Understand
Didn’t you ever have one of those bands that everyone you ever met was like, “Holy shit, you need to hear this immediately!” and you just didn’t give a damn? Well, for me, Finland‘s now-defunct 
Reverend Bizarre is one of those bands. Any time I’ve had a conversation with either friends who know who they are, dudes at shows or anyone else about them, it’s always been how amazing they are, this and that, blah blah blah, changing the world, best doom since Vitus, so on and so forth. I mean, come on. They put out an EP dedicated to Christina Ricci and called it The Goddess of Doom! That’s gotta count for something, right? Meh.
So along the way I’ve periodically picked up Reverend Bizarre albums and tried to convince myself of their ass-kickery (because don’t we all just want to fit in?). I’d put on 2005’s II: Crush the Insects, for example, and be like, “Yeah, this is pretty killer, alright,” and then back onto the shelf it went and was forgotten almost as soon as it was over. My life remained unchanged; the “meh” was fully in tact.
Well, when I was in London, I made another attempt by purchasing the two-disc reissue of their first full-length, 2002’s In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend. I’d been meaning to pick it up for a while and ever since the band “broke up” in 2007 (they’ve had eight releases since then), I’ve had it in the back of my head that I should get these records while I still can, so there it was, there I was and there we were. Only yesterday did I finally convince myself to listen to it.
Maybe I just don’t like being force fed bands. I don’t know.
Anyway, after listening to In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend — plus points for the King Crimson reference — I’m still not a convert to their cult, but at least I get why someone would be. Songs regularly in the 10-plus-minute range, slow, mournful, doomier-than-thou. I can see where the backpatch-on-denim crowd (nothing against them; those are good people) could get down with it, and maybe in the right mood I could too, but there’s still that “meh” element that doesn’t see what all the fuss is about. Maybe I’ll feel differently about the third record, which I’m sure I’ll pick up eventually, either because I actually want to hear it or because I’m a sucker. Maybe that’ll be the one that finally gets me to their altar.
Tags: Finland, Reverend Bizarre, Spinefarm
To me it’s not just the music, which is good, but about the fact that they made their music when nobody else was making it. They wrote music which was a tribute to the masters of the old, very rigidly anchored to the traditions of doom metal and very arrogant in their attitudes towards other modern music.
So I think their influece was huge and propelled doom metal into the spheres it is today, traditional doom metal in particular. Which also means that their influence and style was significant back then, but doesn’t necessarily translate “to today” as well.
I’ve been lucky to have seen their journey from the early days (after Slide of Doom -demo, all the way until final Death March gigs) to the planned end, which has been a long journey, but it also resulted (not by their own, but huge impact and influence IMO) in a very vibrant doom metal scene in Europe.