Album Review: Curse the Son, Delirium
Four years ago, long-running Connecticut fuzz lurchers Curse the Son offered Excruciation (review here) as their fourth full-length, and pushed depressive and stylistic boundaries in expansive and melodic ways. It was the darkest Curse the Son had ever been. The band as they were at the time doesn’t exist anymore, so maybe it’s not such a surprise that Delirium, their fifth album, follows a different course. They remain led, as always, by guitarist/vocalist Ron Vanacore, but Curse the Son aren’t strangers to trading out players or a rhythm section, which is what’s happened here.
With bassist Dan Weeden and drummer Brian Harris — who since recording has already been replaced by the teenaged Logan Vanacore, son to Ron — the band’s personality as channeled through the material comes off as more doom than stoner, with opener “The Suffering is Ours,” “Deliberate Cruelty” and “In Dismal Space” answering for the atmosphere of the prior release while locking into more straight-ahead grooves that feel stripped down in terms of arrangement. There isn’t a ton of layering (but some), and while “In Dismal Space” has a vocal reach, its core shuffle is well within Vanacore‘s purview.
The instrumental portion of the album, whether that’s the sans-vocals “Riff Forest” picking up directly from the back end of the Witchfinder General cover “R.I.P.” (premiered here) in a way that feels like it was born out of an organic jam inspired by the song prior, or the druggy effects interlude “Brain Paint” ahead of the title-track, or “May Cause Drowsiness” directly after and penultimate to the finale “Liste of the Dead,” helps assure there’s enough variety of intention represented, but this too comes in a context that speaks to the core idea of what Curse the Son do in terms of tonal worship Sabbathian stoner-doom and an exploration of themes around mental health. There’s been a global pandemic since the last time Curse the Son put out an LP, so yes, the mood on Delirium remains reliably downer.
The plague is accounted for in “Deliberate Cruelty” after the initial plod of “The Suffering is Ours.” A thickened chug boogie and harmonized lead-guitar flourish gives over to the chorus, “This is our/Extermination song/When breathing/Is terminal for everyone.” That’s a story that’s been told many times at this point, but in phrasing and sound alike, Curse the Son make their version resonate in groove and experience. Most of all, the impression Delirium gives — somewhat contradicting the title — is one of clarity on the part of the band. Of course, the medication-induced fog that would seem to be coming through in “Brain Paint” and the more swirling, languid 52 seconds of “May Cause Drowsiness” are intended to capture a certain kind of stupor, and fair enough.
But as Curse the Son forego what felt like some of the more relatively experimental aspects of the last album and find their way into the kind of doomly traditionalism of “Liste of the Dead” — like slower The Obsessed with Vanacore‘s voice layered in ’90s-Ozzy style for the chorus — and the morose slogging in the bookending leadoff, etc., it’s easy to read purpose into the shape that Delirium takes. Could be Curse the Son willfully pushing themselves in a different direction at Vanacore‘s behest — he’s the only one to play on both records, after all — or it could simply be an extension of the shift in character resulting from the corresponding change in personnel, I honestly don’t know, but as the listener engages with the shove and crashdown of “In Dismal Space,” the dropout of guitar and bass in its verse lines, the album’s sound doesn’t seem like happenstance in the slightest.
Perhaps leaning into the doom portion of the balance of stoner-doom was inevitable for a band who’ve never been shy about wearing their discontent on their collective sleeve, and perhaps part of what makes Delirium feel so self-aware is the aforementioned Witchfinder General cover. This speaks pointedly to older influences — the song originally appeared on the NWOBHM-era doom rockers’ 1982 album, Death Penalty — and accordingly to an older audience, and the inclusion of “Riff Forest” right after not only accounts for how Curse the Son are making that obscure-classic their own, but how they’ve incorporated that influence into their own writing in this particular case. Underlying it all is Black Sabbath, of course, but Curse the Son‘s songwriting seems throughout the album to only benefit from the focused take that birthed it.
To wit, the hook of “Delirium” itself with its clever turn around the month of July being a wonderful time to start living and a terrible time to die represents a cleverness that’s been in Vanacore‘s craft since the also-medicated days of 2011’s Klonopain (review here). The difference on Delirium, then, is one of maturity in expressing and framing ideas; that is, the focus itself is the sign of growth in the band’s root approach, and as cognizant as they may or may not be of direction and how much flash they wanted to bring to the production this time out, the underlying development of what they do remains natural. There’s a drift factor as Delirium moves from its opening salvo into the interludes woven across the second half of the tracklisting — “In Dismal Space” makes for a winning centerpiece coming out of “Riff Forest,” and “Brain Paint” takes off from there — but that outward portrayal of a loss of clarity shouldn’t be taken as actual confusion about what Curse the Son are trying to accomplish. Delirium isn’t so much a step backward as it is a realignment around a different idea of what they do.
In a way, it’s a shame that the timing on Logan Vanacore‘s joining the band didn’t work to have him play on these tracks. It’s surely an exciting moment to have Curse the Son bridge a generational divide, and, well, they don’t put out a record every year. All the same, the material on Delirium feels quintessential in what it captures of Curse the Son‘s persona, and considering the manner in which these songs align with and diverge from what they’ve done before, that they are so much the band’s own highlights the solid foundation on which they’re constructed. For established fans or newcomers, they could hardly make it easier to get on board.
