Review & Full Album Stream: Lucifer’s Chalice, The Pact
[Click play above to stream The Pact by Lucifer’s Chalice in full. Album is out Sept. 29 on Shadow Kingdom Records.]
There is a branch of doom and darker-tinged metal that remains steeped in olden ways. Released this past February as a digital offering by the band, the debut full-length from Lucifer’s Chalice, dubbed The Pact, finds wider issue through Shadow Kingdom Records and belongs to this branch. With influences culled from the early New Wave of British Heavy Metal — Cirith Ungol, Pagan Altar, Witchfinder General, youngest Iron Maiden, etc. — and classic Sabbathian doom, its four tracks feel as much ready to have the logo representing them scrawled sloppily on the front of a high-school notebook as flown proudly on a denim “battle vest” backpatch.
The Durham, UK, four-piece of guitarist/vocalist CW, lead guitarist SRM, bassist DH and drummer KShevil sound like they’d be just fine with either, if the songs are anything to go by. Earning immediate points by opening with the 11-minute “Hung at the Crossroads,” the hook and gallop of which serve as a table-setting representation of the band’s methods in general, The Pact unfolds brazenly and with a cassette-ready feel that has become cult metal in a way that is perhaps outside Lucifer’s Chalice‘s control, but nonetheless feels prevalent in their late-’70s/early-’80s vibe, persistent in spite of a modern production that’s telling of its actual time — i.e., now — especially in the drums, which if they were actually tracked in 1981 would have the snare likely be obtrusively loud in the mix and coated in reverb. Fortunately (mostly), that emblematic nuance of the era to which The Pact owes so much of its affect has been left by the wayside.
What’s been kept in place is careening riffs leading a charge topped by raw but proto-soaring vocals, and those elements provide the crux of The Pact‘s castle-storming, rusty-axe-wielding 36-minute charge. Though it begins with a mournful lead over a strummed central figure, it’s “Hung at the Crossroads” that begins the thrust in earnest, and the song moves fluidly through its extended runtime, gaining momentum as it works through its verses and chorus toward a slowdown just before the five-minute mark that brings a few minutes of doomier impression-making, to which CW‘s voice is well-suited in post-Candlemass fashion. Following a solo from SRM, a subsequent verse, and another lead, KShevil‘s drums signal a tempo change and the initial push resumes just before nine minutes in and holds sway for the remainder prior to the crash that brings on the sample from 1960’s The City of the Dead in which Massachusetts villagers burn Abigail Adams as a witch.
That’s as fitting an intro as one could ask for the 10-minute track itself, which builds into a rolling first verse quickly and holds to a method ultimately similar to “Hung at the Crossroads” before it, with straightforward push and some underlying doomly swing in the drums to go with its horror-based Satanic lyrical theme, storytelling done in the second-person such that “The devil owns your soul/Hell will be your home.” Of course, the familiarity and blatant play to style is an important part of the aesthetic for Lucifer’s Chalice, and the band have that moniker to live up to, after all, so the adoption cliché isn’t necessarily unwelcome, particularly with the solo it leads to and the uptick in tempo past four minutes in, heading to a midsection that holds to its central modus where the preceding cut veered away and an end that is perhaps the most Maiden-esque stretch here, setting up “Full Moon Nights” and “Priestess of Death” as a shorter side two with another big finish and quick fade.
“Full Moon Nights” arrives with no less than Klaus Kinski as Dracula in Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre from 1979, hearing the howling of wolves and calling it the music of the children of the night. Not a minor reference to make, but the song lives up to it with the fervency of its metallic shove, marked out by the kind of riff from which thrash would’ve taken influence three and a half decades ago and CW pushing his voice to and beyond its breaking point. A more turning progression arrives as the title-line is delivered, but it’s not long before Lucifer’s Chalice are heading forward again, and in the second half of “Full Moon Nights” the energy of their thrust picks up and is drawn toward another extended ending, this one consuming the full last minute and adding a sense of grandeur to counterbalance what’s still been a fairly raw production throughout. The Pact pays one more visit to the VHS shelf to break out 1971’s Twins of Evil for the sample that begins closer “Priestess of Death,” the hook of which is arguably the most memorable since “Hung at the Crossroads” and which reaffirms the devil worship of “The Pact” and “Full Moon Nights.”
As with those cuts, the source material is referenced in the lyrics, and it’s the guitars doing most of the heavy lifting in establishing the personality of the piece — a dual-layered lead as they move through the third minute is a standout point leading into more full-on thrashing and another precise, crashing run through the chorus prior to a surprisingly shredding solo. That gives way to a temporary slowdown that seems like it might be the band’s ending statement, but as “Hung at the Crossroads” did so skillfully, “Priestess of Death” also returns to its core to finish out, capping The Pact on a sudden but effective snap. Lucifer’s Chalice are hardly reinventing classic metal on their first record, but neither is that their intent. Rather, they pay homage to the Metal of Old with these four songs and in theme and purpose begin to stake out the approach they’ll hopefully continue to develop as they move forward, forging themselves in steel and casting outward with doom and pre-thrash malevolence.
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