Band: Purveyors Of Sonic Doom
Album: Mankind Is Unkind
Label: Self Release
Genre: Doom
Two-piece sludge-doom band Purveyors Of Sonic Doom hail from Ottawa, Canada. Formed just in March of 2019, the duo has been hard at work recording and releasing demos, and on April 14th of this year they released their debut of sonic Lo-Fi destruction, Mankind Is Unkind, to the masses.
They originally quickly recorded their first demo titled Death Rides a Horse Called Doom and released it April 17th of 2019, barely a month after they formally formed. After listening to the aforementioned demo a few times, I couldn't help but wonder why the went the direction of *cleaning* up the vocals on their January release of Eyeless Void and on after that.
I ended up shooting them a message, and they explained it was a stylistic decision. "The vocals on the "Death Rides..." are heavily distorted and we felt that it would keep a lot of people from listening to us as they (the vocals) are an acquired taste haha. The vocals on Eyeless Void and Entombed Black Earth are the same as on the Mankind Is Unkind, it's just the new album is much better produced and the vocals aren't buried in the mix." If you'd like to listen to the two demos, Eyeless Void and Entombed Black Earth, they are both available on the band's Bandcamp page.
Track one, "Old Lore," starts off with a man telling us that if we want the adventure to continue we must flip the cassette over to side B to continue. Kind of a cheeky way to start off the first song, but I dig it. The sound is very much Lo-Fi with lots of reverb that almost makes it feel like they recorded every song live. The guitar from Ted Gloom is tuned so low I barely miss having a bass there.
"Bacchanalian" refers to the Roman festivals that celebrated old God Bacchus, the God of fertility, wine and agriculture. Lines like, "harvest blood wine, revel in flesh, sip nectar foreign, black archaic sin," all highlight different aspects of these festivities. While one may scratch their heads at how this could sound good, somehow over the duo's sludge ridden sounds they make it work very well.
The next song, "Hammer Kin," has some of my favorite work from drummer Nick Tooms. The lyrical theme to this one is, quite simply, a king rising to power and destroying his enemies with a hammer. It's a brutal sound they create, and you'll want to crank up your stereo or headphones for this one.
"The Slayer" is their most fantasy filled track in my opinion, with speak of wizards and summoning doom. In other words, my favorite kind of shit. If you've read some of my other reviews, like the one for Australian doomsters The Wizar'd, you'll know this is right up my alley.
The last track, "Mankind Is Unkind," flips the table of homo sapiens rule and instead find that apes rule and a primitive man is locked in cages. The song is utterly bleak, and the sound is dismal to it's bowels. The track ends in a chaotic frenzy which brings Mankind Is Unkind to a close.
I'm giving Mankind Is Unkind an 8/10
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