Church Of Misery ‘Houses Of The Unholy’ CD/LP 2009

Church Of Misery 'Houses Of The Unholy' CD/LP 2009This little disc of pure heavy rock heaven should be played at no less than 50 wattage output, and you should ideally listen to it in your underpants, throwing androgynous rock star shapes in front of a mirror, with fresh blood on your chest and face. Riffophiliac string punishers Church Of Misery, as the case with many cult Japanese outfits, suck the appreciative listener into their own ultra-eccentric and obsessive dimension; in this case a sick and disorientating world of infamous serial killers and bluesy seventies doom metal. This latest album is their third full-length studio outing and just like anything from their back catalogue, it will take the top of your fucking head off and shit blinding psychedelic riffs inside your cranial cavity.

The sheer rocking power of COM is awe inspiring – opener ‘El Padrino’ starts with an American news reporter outlining the grisly details of the victims of killer Adolfo De Jesus Constanzo (look up his crimes on the net), layered over a welter of ominous feedback and booming chords and drums. The track is a slow and grooving blues rock monster that thunders like the bastard offspring of early Sabbath and the finest seventies shit, all crazed guitar licks, roaring guttural vocals and a very tasty flanged out bass guitar break executed as if Geezer Butler was strangling it himself. ‘Shotgun Boogie’ picks up the pace with a frenetic workout of speeding riffs and ear splitting drum fills. ‘The Gray Man’ is half Bronto-plod and half blues-punk face smash, an adrenalised heavy metal paean to the revolting sadist Albert Fish that rocks like a big redneck retard injected with the distilled essence of Ted Nugent, the MC5 and AC/DC.

‘Blood Sucking Freak’ is a combustive ode to wannabe vampire Richard Trenton Chase that quivers and sprawls like a beached kraken. The vocals of Yoshiaki Negishi are fantastic – wild and rough as fuckery, lending a real ballsy front to the sound of Japan’s premier hard rock jam wizards. ‘Master Heartache’ is a cover by seminal seventies rockers Sir Lord Baltimore that blasts off like a psychedelic death rocket and really shows off (relatively new) guitarist Tom Sutton’s explosively propane powered fret work – he dominates this album like a six-string torture lord, his razor sharp riffs and wild spitting solos literally burst over the awesomely solid rhythm section like frothing magma. ‘Born To Raise Hell’ first appeared on last year’s brilliant ‘Dennis Nilsen’ ep, and is a juggernaut stomper that rocks out on a fantastic riff, the like of which has not been heard since Blue Cheer first plugged in their battered instruments in the late sixties. Last track ‘Badlands’ is a kind of warped boozy knees up that celebrates (?) the bloody teen partnership of ‘Natural Born Killers’ inspirations Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate, and is driven along by a jaw dropping Mikami bass line that comes belching out of the speakers like a fat demon cock.

Heavy as a thousand fucking fat boys rolled into one flesh mutant, with the bollocks of Kong and the glinting cannibal teeth of a giant Jeffery Dahmer, this is one gigantic blood-soaked phallic blues apocalypse of an album that firmly puts COM on the map as one of the world’s greatest living exponents of psychedelic hard rock.

Label: Rise Above Records
Website: www.churchofmisery.net

Scribed by: Adam Stone