Posted in Whathaveyou on September 4th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Church of Misery‘s current lineup — if there is one — is the stuff fire-emoji splurges are made of. I saw them less than a month ago at SonicBlast in Portugal (review here), so no, I’m not just basing that assessment on the record. Though, if I were, the work of Japanese doom rock legend, bassist and auteur Tatsu Mikami in riffcraft there would probably be enough for the statement to stand. The very definition of ‘on fire,’ or perhaps it would be more thematically appropriate to describe them as: killer.
Guitarist Fumiya Hattori, also in Tatsu‘s Sonic Flower side-project and visibly the youngest member of Church of Misery, is a huge part of why. I’ll allow that having Tatsu‘s riffs to work from is for sure a leg-up in that, but the character in his solos and what he brings to the material in his style, sitting right in the pocket on those Sabbath-worship grooves, new and old — that is, not only on Born Under a Mad Sign(review here), which is his first appearance with the band — is not to be understated.
He’s a special player, not the least because he’ll continue to grow. And yeah, Church of Misery run through personnel on the regular — even in in the post making it official with Fumiya, Tatsu notes they’re looking for singers and drummers — so it may or may not be forever, but hopefully his will be a career to follow. A player like that will always find someone in need of their services.
Here’s that post from Tatsu:
Fumiya Hattori (Sonic Flower) has joined Church of Misery as a guitarist.
After Sonic Flower’s new recording and Church of Misery’s two European tours, Fumiya Hattori (Gt.) has become an official member of Church of Misery.
<<< Vocalist, drummer wanted >>>
Vocalist and drummer are active with the cooperation of support members, so we are still looking for vocalists and drummers.
Those who have an understanding of this kind of music and can lead a life centered around a band, including overseas tours. Practice in the city. Cannot be shared with other bands. The drummer is male or female. It doesn’t matter whether you recommend yourself or others.
If you are interested, please contact the Gmail posted on the website.
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.
