Lord Vicar, The Black Powder: In the Bedrock
Posted in Reviews on May 2nd, 2019 by JJ Koczan
Lord Vicar play the doom of conviction. It’s not just a question of writing a song around a riff and putting some vocals on, but of channeling a mindset or a spiritual place through the music. It’s doom as a worldview. The Black Powder (on The Church Within) is their fourth long-player, and their first to pass the one-hour mark since their 2008 debut, Fear No Pain, as its 69 minutes make it the longest record they’ve ever done. Likewise, its 17-minute opener, “Sulfur, Charcoal and Saltpeter” — which is as close as they come to a title-track in naming the ingredients for gunpowder — is the longest single song they’ve ever produced, and with it they explore an album’s worth of textures and emotionality, guitarist Kimi Kärki switching between quiet, wistful acoustic guitar at the outset to a full-brunt tonality before opening to an airy verse underscored and filled out by Rich Jones‘ bass and held together by drummer Gareth Millsted, whose volume swaps prove no less dynamic. Atop what might be the band’s to-date masterpiece — they’ve certainly worked in longer-form material before, but never quite on the same scale — enter the vocals of Christian “Lord Chritus” Linderson, which, with a voice like regrettable history itself, bolster the emotional scathe of the music.
It would be simple for The Black Powder to play out as a retread of the band’s pedigree, and no doubt there’s plenty to draw from there, with Kärki having helped inspire a generation of traditionalist European doom in Finland’s Reverend Bizarre and Orne before diving into varying kinds of experimentalism with outfits like E-Musikgruppe Lux Ohr and Uhrijuhla and crafting moody folk as a solo singer-songwriter and Linderson‘s legacy in Count Raven, stint fronting Saint Vitus on 1992’s C.O.D., more rock-based outfit Terra Firma, and time in Goatess as well as the newer unit Python in Sweden. Lord Vicar could simply be an empty showpiece of doom playing to past strengths if they wanted. That’s not what’s happening on The Black Powder.
In the level of songwriting throughout — not just on the opener, but on the hooky “Descent,” which immediately follows, and down the line through the drastic tempo changes of centerpiece “The Temple in the Bedrock,” the Sabbathian rocker “Black Lines,” the acoustic “Nightmare” and closer “A Second Chance: Including The Wagoner, My Soul is Never Free, and Strict Master,” which resolves itself in setting the progressive melancholy of its last chorus directly against one of the record’s most fervent thrusts — the band show a commitment not just to the tenets of what makes doom doom, but to bringing a sense of identity through that and thereby push forward toward individualist expression. Their doom. It should be of little surprise to anyone with experience in listening to the band that it works. Returning to the studio with Joona Lukala, who engineered and mixed 2016’s Gates of Flesh (review here) and has mastered all of Lord Vicar‘s full-lengths and split releases, of course brings a measure of consistency to the sound, but that allows the freshness in these compositions to stand out amid the familiar elements.
The concrete wall of distortion in “World Encircled” feels particularly stage-born and stage-made, while the sub-three-minute “Impact” (premiered here) is as all-go a rocker as the band has ever produced, taking the swing of the early going in “The Temple in the Bedrock” or the bridge in the prior “Levitation” and making it the central notion brought to bear in a fashion that “A Second Chance” soon enough answers back in the last payoff for the album as a whole, speeding its way to a cold finish that’s only missing the applause afterward to further the live impression. At the same time, the work Linderson is doing on vocals is a highlight unto itself, with double-track layering, flourishes of harmony, and on “Nightmare,” a laid-bare feel that’s still coated in echo and soon answered back by choral keys and drums, but still rich in its intimacy and ’70s prog/folk soulfulness, gorgeous and sad in like measure. One could say the same of much of The Black Powder, but the shift in intent on “Nightmare” makes it all the more palpable.
The band, with has stated that the loose central concept of the album is an examination of humanity manifold failings and the numbing of self that is often the response to the simple end of getting through the day surrounded by so much horror; The Black Powder as an image of snorting gunpowder like cocaine, i.e. “Black Lines.” So be it. The notion of doom standing in judgment of society at large is nothing new, going back to Black Sabbath‘s “Hand of Doom” as a primary example, but in a way, the theme also serves as analog to the effect of the record and its songs as a whole. With Millsted and Kärki as primary songwriters, Lord Vicar reinvigorate the traditional tenets of the style in such a way as to not only stand with them, but to make them new again. Their topic could hardly be more fitting for the age in which they appear — a thousand everything-owning Neros fiddling with their genitals as the world burns — but there is more to The Black Powder than cold verdict-reaching and negativity.
Somehow, it is a personal work as well. In Linderson‘s vocals and the instrumental chemistry between Jones, Kärki and Millsted as well, there’s something vibrant shining through amidst the grimness of the matter at hand. That might be the part of humanity worth saving — humanity seems to think so — but we’re not there yet, and Lord Vicar aren’t about to posture and offer some kind of hope from out of all the terror one sees when paying even the most modest amount of attention to the world. It’s not about placating. It’s not just about condemning. It’s laying it all out and asking what the hell might come next, and The Black Powder does the same thing for Lord Vicar sonically. It’s no coincidence that it is their longest album, or that it has their longest single-song, or their greatest breadth of songwriting and performance. It is a moment to which their work has been leading, and as with every step that brought them here, it feels purposeful in the extreme. A no-brainer to call it one of 2019’s best doom records, and frankly, that’s probably underselling it.
