Sometimes bands lay it all on the table, and you know exactly what you’re getting before you even put the disc on. Such is the case with UK collective Wizard’s Beard, whose vicious sludge coats even the name of their PsycheDOOMelic debut, Pure Filth. If ever the tag “as advertised” applied anywhere, it applies here. The Leeds four-piece top nasty, sometimes angular, riffing and crashing with throat-burning screams, and seem to keep the Pure Filth ethic in mind at all times. In the case of centerpiece track, “Parasite,” their abrasiveness borders on unlistenable, but there seems to be just enough underlying groove throughout the album to keep Wizard’s Beard from tipping over into absolute mayhem. That’s not to say they’re writing songs with catchy choruses or hooks to draw the listener in, or even meeting accessibility halfway somehow – because they’re not – just that if you follow the riff, you might be able to come out of these five tracks with your face still attached to your skull.

The last several years have seen a new league of sludgers take influence from the Southern progenitors of the genre – you know the list – and push the sound into more extreme territory, and Wizard’s Beard seem to do likewise, most especially in the screaming of vocalist Chris Hardy. Where elder sludge had its basis in hardcore punk or crossover, Hardy’s wrenching shout – one can almost hear the phlegm curdling in the back of his mouth – is more purely metallic, or might not sound out of place topping some blastbeat-laden grindcore instead of the numbingly slow Pure Filth closer “The Albatross.” The hate-fest begins immediately with opener “Paint the Skies,” as Hardy tops the beer-chugging riffs of guitarist Craig Jackson and bassist Neil Travers leads a break with drummer Dan Clarke that’s hardly long enough for one to recover from the pummeling Wizard’s Beard have just delivered. Like a lot of Pure Filth, “Paint the Skies” relies on one central figure riff and bases other parts around that, but the repetition is all the more setup for the bridge here, which is slower, more rung out, and finds Travers adding a growl to Hardy’s screams that only bolsters the extremity.

As much as other acts have looked toward blending genres, bringing in black or death metal to make their sound more metal, Wizard’s Beard seem content to stick with a purely sludge approach, and just do it meaner. At 1:47, second Pure Filth cut “Hemorrhage” is barely there before it’s gone, but even so, its pacing isn’t that fast when compared to other forms of extreme metal. What’s most encouraging about it is perhaps how it relates to the ultra-stomp of “Parasite,” which follows. The earlier cut is all swagger and fuck-all, the latter more calculating and rhythmic. Both are avenues to the same pissed-off abhorrence, but they take different paths to get there, resulting in a consistency in the material that goes beyond the sound of the band or the style of production, which is crisp enough, but still plenty dirty. “Parasite” feels new school because of its starts and stops and off-time vibe, and it’s easy to picture skinny kids doing split-lip kung fu to it in a spontaneous show of aggression, but Wizard’s Beard haven’t so much veered from sludge here as they’ve brought in an element from outside and made it work on their terms. Those terms, incidentally, are “fuck” and “you.”

If the song named for the band, “Wizard’s Beard,” is to be seen as the most exemplary of their style, it’s a fair enough assessment. The groove is revived a bit from “Parasite”’s excursion elsewhere, and on the whole, it’s a more straightforwardly sludged track, setting up with a faster pace the feedback-soaked plod of “The Albatross,” which is the longest song on Pure Filth at 9:01 and perhaps the most embodying of the title. At 5:17, the pace picks up momentarily with Clarke going double-time on his hi-hat, but don’t be fooled, Wizard’s Beard soon return to the doomed tempo from whence they came. They switch back and forth again, Travers and Hardy adding their most effective interplay of the album and finally coming together at the end as if to deliver one last violent blow to the eardrums. You can make Iron Monkey and EyeHateGod comparisons, and you probably wouldn’t be wrong in doing so, but there’s more to the story with Pure Filth than just aping what others have already done in sludge. They’re still far from mature in terms of developing individuality of sound, and there’s really no mystery what they’re all about, but Wizard’s Beard deliver nearly 32 minutes of disgusting, drowned-in-mud excess, and though it’s in no way fit for public consumption, Pure Filth is admirable nonetheless.

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PsycheDOOMelic Records

Tags: Leeds, PsycheDOOMelic Records, UK, Wizard's Beard

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 26th, 2011 at 12:39 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.