The Wounded Kings, In the Chapel of the Black Hand: Call Upon Dionysus
Posted in Reviews on October 6th, 2011 by JJ KoczanIt might be time to stop thinking of The Wounded Kings as traditional doom. On their third album since 2008, In the Chapel of the Black Hand (I Hate Records), the British outfit have all but completely grown past their earlier connections to the doom of yore – if there are any similarities between the thorough and encompassing atmospheres of these four tracks (really three and one well-placed interlude) and the likes of ‘80s and ‘90s doomers, it’s in the cultish atmospheres The Wounded Kings present, and that can be traced further back to ‘70s Hammer Horror and freak folk. Make no mistake, The Wounded Kings are doomed on In the Chapel of the Black Hand – perhaps even the most doomed they’ve yet been, which anyone who heard last year’s stellar The Shadow Over Atlantis or their An Introduction to the Black Arts split with Virginian volume mongers Cough will tell you is no easy feat – but the drive of the record is thinking forward rather than paying tribute, and that’s a big difference when it comes doom that’s played so excruciatingly slow. Part of any perceivable change in the band’s sound, however, has to be attributed to the fact that The Wounded Kings in 2011 is a completely different band than they were even a year ago.
Now a five-piece, guitarist Steve Mills has essentially reconstructed the band around himself, with vocalist Sharie Neyland taking over for Mills’ co-founder George Birch, and drummer Mike Heath, bassist Jim Wilumsen and second guitarist Alex Kearney coming aboard to round out the current lineup. It’s still Mills in charge of the writing, and his guitars were always layered anyway with Hammond and synth (which he also handles again here), but there are discernable musical differences between In the Chapel of the Black Hand and The Wounded Kings’ past incarnations and outings. Inarguably, Heath gives the best performance on drums the band has ever had on an album – and the best-sounding, as captured by Chris Fielding of the Welsh Foel Studios (Electric Wizard, Conan, Serpent Venom) – and Neyland’s vocals, while perhaps sharing some of Birch’s vibrato and echoing otherworldliness in their depictions of pagan and occult ceremonies and themes, are bound to be a key distinguishing factor for many listeners, if only for the gender-switch of the band’s frontperson. Mills remains consistent tonally, on these cuts, particularly with “Curse of Chains” from the Cough split, which had better production overall than the last record, but shows growth in his songwriting methodology. Centered around three longer tracks – “The Cult of Souls,” “Gates of Oblivion” (with parts subtitled “The Descent,” “Dominion” and “Arrival”) and the closing “In the Chapel of the Black Hand” – with the four-minute “Return of the Sorcerer” just before the closer, In the Chapel of the Black Hand feels more concise than its predecessor, even though it’s almost exactly the same length. The ambience of The Shadow Over Atlantis’ instrumentals, “Into the Ocean’s Abyss” and “Deathless Echo,” has been reworked and added to the songs themselves here, and In the Chapel of the Black Hand flows smoother for it, its doomed march that much more visceral.