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Album Review: Curse the Son, Excruciation

Curse The Son Excruciation

Curse the Son records do not happen every day, and for those who have or those who haven’t followed the trajectory of the Connecticut-based outfit over the years as founding guitarist/vocalist Ron Vanacore has seen lineups come and go and years pass at an ever-increasing pace, their catalog only really tells part of the tell of everything they’ve been through. That’s especially the case with Excruciation, which is the band’s second offering through Ripple Music behind 2016’s Isolator (review here), and fourth overall, with their prior two long-players being 2012’s Psychache (review here) and 2011’s Klonopain (review here).

If you notice there a decreasing rate of releases, from one year between the first two records to four between each the second and the third and the third and the fourth, lineup shifts account for part of it. Vanacore brought in bassist Brendan Keefe on Isolator and Keefe returns on the nine-song/49-minute Excruciation with an even deeper level of contribution to the songwriting — even going so far as to take on vocal and guitar duties apart from those already fulfilled by Vanacore in addition to handling the low end.

Songs like “Novembre,” the twang-inflected blues blowout that is the penultimate “Devil Doctor Blues,” and the call and response that emerges in the standout chorus of “Worry Garden” would seem to be examples of the greater level of musical conversation particularly between the two players, and many of Excruciation‘s overarching themes — almost universally based around various turmoils and distraught/despairing feelings; it’s by no means a “happy” record on its face (or lack of a face, if you’re looking at the cover art) — are reportedly derived from Keefe‘s experience being involved in and eventually recovering from the trauma of a motorcycle accident in late-2018. Though the album ends on a hopeful note with the classic metal-tinged wailing vocals of and uptempo groove of “Phoenix Risin’,” the message of going through hell to get to that point isn’t at all lost on the listener. Tough times meeting with heavy riffs; this is the stuff upon which doom is made, and Curse the Son are well in their element in this sphere.

At the same time, as they also welcome drummer Robert Ives for his first studio appearance with them, Curse the Son also use the increased amount of collaboration as a means to expand the parameters of their sound. Rest assured, the foundation of Excruciation is still in the depth of tone and the manner in which the riffs lead the way through the songs, but the key difference between this album and what the three-piece brought to their earlier outings is that the balance between “riff” and “song” has changed, and it’s the former serving the latter to a greater degree than they’ve ever put to record before.

Their melodies, especially on vocals, are richer, their progressions are more varied, and there’s more atmosphere throughout Excruciation that ties the material together in exciting and dynamic ways. Vanacore and Curse the Son have never had a problem busting out memorable hooks — IsolatorPsychache and Klonopain were full of them — and so is this album. The uptempo circa-’75 Sabbathian jumper that is opener “Suicide by Drummer” makes its presence felt first with a key change in the vocals in the first verse and thereby signals the greater range through which the band will work across the record that follows.

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Ives brings suitable swing there and adds to the downward-moving march of the subsequent “Disaster in Denial,” the later harmonies of which payoff a potential Curse the Son seemed to tease on Isolator as the first effort with Keefe backing Vanacore on vocals, but there’s no question Curse the Son are a stronger band for what the bassist(-plus) brings to the proceedings throughout these tracks. Playing off Vanacore‘s familiar rolling riffs and echoing verses, a song like the sprawling “Novembre” touches ground that wouldn’t have even seemed possible for Curse the Son four years ago, hitting on notions of layering and melody-construction that are surprising and thrilling in like measure.

And though “Novembre” arguably pushes farthest in that regard, it’s by means the only instance. “Worry Garden”‘s backing vocals, the grunge-style brooding of the title-track, the pure Alice in Chains-style showing in “Infinite Regression” and the kick-into-payoff of “Black Box Warning” — all of this and more feeds into the notion of Curse the Son as a more dynamic and aesthetically broad unit than they’ve ever been.

The big irony of Excruciation, then, is that as much misery as it’s conveying, the record itself is a complete victory. Even as it rounds out with “Devil Doctor Blues,” drawing to mind some of Geezer‘s earlier slide work, and “Phoenix Risin'” showing off a fist-up-heavy-metal vocal soar that’s a kind of who-knew-they-had-it-in-’em? moment in itself — those verse lines get a little repetitive, but hell’s bell’s, repetition is the point — Excruciation sees Curse the Son pursuing new avenues of expression, and though by modern standards, the album is on the longer end of a single LP at 49 minutes, the songwriting around which it’s based and the riffs from which these songs take their shape more than justify the journey the listener undertakes from front end to back, emotionally grueling as that might be at times.

Tracked over a period of months beginning in August 2019 and culminating in a mix completed in January 2020, Excruciation is the second record Curse the Son have put together at Dirt Floor Studios in Haddam, CT, working with producer Eric Lichter, and the band themselves have noted giving Lichter a larger role in the presentation of the songs and the way in which the material was finalized and arranged. If the result of that is some of the lengthening of Curse the Son‘s sonic reach as can be heard throughout their fourth album, then clearly they’ve found the right pair of ears to help them make the most of what they’ve been doing all along — all the more because it’s in no way overproduced.

For those seeking pure riff-based heavy, Curse the Son will satisfy no less than they ever have, but that’s only a piece of what Excruciation has to offer, and if the experiences that inspired it were difficult, then at very least it wasn’t all for nothing. A work like this is the kind of thing bands dream of realizing.

Curse the Son, Excruciation (2020)

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