Album Review: Church of Misery, Born Under a Mad Sign
It’s taken Church of Misery seven years to release Born Under a Mad Sign, their seventh album, and it has seven tracks, so perhaps mad signs abound on the seminal Japanese doom rockers’ latest LP for Rise Above Records. The band, led as ever by bassist Tatsu Mikami — who belongs in the conversation with the likes of Matt Pike and Leif Edling when it comes to Iommic inheritors — will cross the 30-year mark on the back of this 54-minute onslaught, which remains true to their modus of writing songs about serial killers and other cult figures.
In the past it’s been Ted Bundy and Aileen Wuornos coupled with a Cactus cover — that was 2004’s The Second Coming, by the way — here it’s Fritz Haarmann (as seen on the cover), H.H. Holmes and Haystacks Balboa‘s “Spoiler” being covered, so perhaps over time Tatsu has had to dig a little past the obvious in terms of people to write about and bands to cover, even if the essential formula remains consistent. The same could be said of the riffs, and make no mistake, the riffs are central both on Born Under a Mad Sign and throughout Church of Misery‘s catalog. While there’s plenty of the up-front Black Sabbath sludge boogie for which Church of Misery are so widely and so correctly lauded, Born Under a Mad Sign also stretches out in terms of jams and solos in a way that the band’s most recent album, 2016’s recorded-in-America And Then There Were None (review here) was less interested in doing.
Not particularly surprising since, Tatsu aside, the band is working with a completely different lineup. This too is part of how Church of Misery operate, with members coming and going over a course of decades and serving pretty much at Tatsu‘s say-so until the don’t. This collection brings back vocalist Kazuhiro Asaeda, who sang on Church of Misery‘s 2003 split with Acrimony, the recorded-in-1996-released-in-2007 Vol. 1 (reissue review here), and who featured on the 2022 offering Me and My Bell Bottom Blues (review here) from Tatsu‘s Sonic Flower side-project last year.
Kazuhiro is a big piece of what makes Born Under a Mad Sign work so well. To hear his guttural squeal amid the roll of closer “Butcher Baker (Robert Hansen),” like if Satan decided to stop teaching guitar and just play and sing the blues himself, or his rasps from under the lumbering tonal chaos of centerpiece “Murder Castle Blues (H.H. Holmes),” he is as organic a fit in terms of personality as Tatsu‘s lyrics have ever had, and in listening, I find I’m perfectly happy to not know the words save for picking up a few things here and there, as on the opener “Beltway Sniper (John Allen Muhammad),” which in addition to being one of the album’s upper-tier ass-kickers is interesting for crossing a line between someone who’s a serial killer and a mass murder. The difference, as I understand it, is serial killers go one at a time. Does this mean Church of Misery would write songs about mass shooters? And what response would they get to, say, a song about Columbine, or Sandy Hook, or Uvalde? Is that a line they would cross? Is there a line they wouldn’t?
One’s own sensibilities and interests will invariably inform opinions on what’s discussed and how throughout this or any other Church of Misery work, and it seems silly to feign moral pearl-clutching for something they’ve been doing almost since their start, but the chance the band take in exploring more modern murder in its various forms, particularly at the level they’re doing it, is that someone from outside the underground in which they reside will notice and call them out on the generally horrific nature of their themes. I’m not saying that will happen with Born Under a Mad Sign, though it could since people are still alive who remember David Koresh or the Beltway Sniper, but Church of Misery have trod this ground before and gotten away with it so there’s nothing to say they can’t again. All I’m saying is with riffs this good, they run the risk of being heard.
Even more endemic to the personality of the record is the guitar work of Yukito Okazaki, whose bluesy pulls in the second-half solo of “Beltway Sniper (John Allen Muhammad)” and the density of the subsequent chug set a high standard that the songs that follow thankfully meet. With Toshiaki Umemura on drums, a(nother) new incarnation of Church of Misery is complete, and they sound extra vicious in so much of Born Under a Mad Sign, whether it’s the make-a-nasty-face nod of “Most Evil (Fritz Haarmann)” or the wah-complemented shove and shout of “Freeway Madness Boogie (Randy Kraft),” the groove loose and the danger of coming apart high as the band nonetheless hold it together as of course they would.
“Most Evil (Fritz Haarmann)” tops 10 minutes and “Freeway Madness Boogie (Randy Kraft)” is one of the shorter cuts on the 2LP at 6:16 — the shortest is “Spoiler,” the aforementioned Haystacks Balboa cover — but both are unabashed riff-fests, and the same holds true throughout. Church of Misery know who they are, what they want to be, and how they want to sound, and Tatsu, as the perceived auteur of that, could fairly be called a visionary. Listening through the swelling roll in the verse of “Murder Castle Blues (H.H. Holmes),” or the way in which “Come and Get Me Sucker (David Koresh)” picks up from the sample of its titular cult leader opining to this or that news organization about Americans arming themselves as a political position to unveil the full threat of its bassline and riff before the blowout verse actually takes hold ahead of the made-for-the-stage shout-along chorus delivering the title line, Tatsu‘s vision comes through clearly.
This is the underlying message of Born Under a Mad Sign, and of Church of Misery circa 2023 more broadly — that the group in whatever form it takes is beholden to Tatsu‘s will, and steered by his direction and whims. They end with “Butcher Baker (Robert Hansen)” and wah-drench the middle before going back to the verse and chorus before jamming out, but even as madcap as the song gets, Kazuhiro comes back on for a final verse to end out, because whatever else Church of Misery are, whoever else they are, as they approach the 30th year of their tenure, they are songwriters. Tatsu is a songwriter. They just make it sound like they’re completely out of control, and the methodical, almost ritualized nature of what they do is perhaps an even greater tie to their subject matter. They are masters of what they do. Wherever you sit on the scale of interest in serial killers or murder more generally, their mastery on display is something to appreciate.
Rise Above Records on Facebook
Rise Above Records on Instagram
Tags: Born Under a Mad Sign, Church of Misery, Church of Misery Born Under a Mad Sign, Japan, Rise Above Records, Tokyo
I’ve had the CD a week or so myself, sent from my local-ish grooveyard. I really appreciate your willingness to take a look at (a beautiful) riff with (an ugly) lyric. Life isn’t all sunshine lollypops and rainbows all the time, blah blah.
I’ve never listened to this band (and probably like you I’ve been listening to them well over two decades) or, for that matter, I suppose any music with lyrics on top, for the lyrics. It’s always the music, (in this case, oh the sweet, sweet riffs) first, with the lyrics tertiary, at best. I’ve never gotten a sense of hero worship/agreement with the actions of the people/monsters that lead to CoMs’ lyrical inspiration. I don’t really have an ear for what they’re singing in terms of an ability to understand what’s being sung, literally, but also, I don’t take them for desiring more ‘content creation’ to just happen so that they can continue constructing riffs around these inhuman humans. If that assessment is false, I’d like to be informed thusly.
I think a past broad/fascination with misanthropy helped me understand the band on a slightly deeper/unnecessary level, but I can see zero distinction between writing lyrics about about these historical/statistical anomalies versus writing about, say, war in general, the world wars specifically, or plights of peoples past, indigenous pain, genocide, the lasting effects of colonialism and empires spreading, religious figureheads disseminating hatred of women and un/non-believers as love, etc, yadda, et al.
Zero agreement with all of it; just as now my tired body and mind find no solace in lyrics praising weed, or any drug, or anything purporting to try to persuade me that being suicidally depressed in an immoral world is a moral imperative for the moral person. As a survivor in recovery from…a lot of things…there are many, many lyrics of many, many favorite records I have memorized that no longer remotely reflect who I am, and what’s fascinating for me personally is that, despite being unable to relate to so many classic songs sung, I find myself unable to stop wanting to hear them, or find new ones to let burrow in if they should desire to find a new nook up in the ol’ noggin’.
Anyhoozle…this is a really strong set of songs/riffs, and when I want to worship riff or die as they put it, this is probably one of the top three CoM discs I’ll pull out to spin in the years to come; it’s up there with the stuff that lead me to fall in love with how they construct a riff in the first place.
It should be highlighted for it’s glut of tone, it shouldn’t be shunned because of lyrical content that is not something anyone wanting to riff worship would sanely laud as being inherently good. Lots of stuff held up as mirrors to society are warnings, not applaudings. Why is War Pigs ever-relevant? Because war is ever-prevalent. The warning, from Sabbath to their disciples, for me is the longer-lasting type-of-mirror, because I think these bands, like most people, want the world to be better, not worse, and sometimes, pointing out the negative in the negative sends the positive message that striving for not doing/being (that thing) is going to be beneficial for us/humanity/the world.
That was a long fucking response. Thanks for letting me think out loud about this, JJ.
Thank you as always for your thoughts and stories of how you experience music. I agree there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance around what’s being said and how, my point was really that the record is good and the culture has changed, not so much the band. I guess I was thinking I wouldn’t be surprised if they got called out for writing about serial killers now when they’ve been doing it for 20-odd years, though I’ll say too, I do think about the Beltway Sniper more like a mass shooter than a serial killer, though I suppose that’s not really true. I can’t remember off the top of my head, but I’m pretty sure they’ve covered cult leaders before. In any case, as you say, you come for the riffs, stay for the riffs, come back for the riffs.
I loved Sonic Flower and pretty much all Church of Misery (Tatsu is amazing) so I’m picking this up – didn’t realize it was out, thx!
I hear ya Jeff – it’s not political – I too think this band simply takes the dark psychological underbelly of society and rips it open with strong riffage. I, personally, would never have started a band where every song references a new serial killer, but in the realm of heavy music, que sera, sera.