By Jeffery McNulty
There is something in the water in the UK right now. Something ugly, dark and exceedingly pissed off. I’m not sure exactly what kind of Lovecraftian horror is breeding over there but it seems like the Crust/Doom scene in England is having a malignant renaissance. At least three new bands have come to my attention recently all hailing from the dark isle, my favorite being Grey Widow. Just the cover is enough to warn you what’s inside but from note one of their new record my hackles began to rise and I knew I was in store for some serious shit.
The opening track of I (also entitled “I”) gives a subtle nod to Sabbath but adds a few more notes on to the end of one of their opening riffs as if saying, “Yeah, we know our roots, but we are going to give you so much more!”. Sure enough they do because that is where the comparisons to the original doom band end. All their songs are titled with numbers, I’m assuming named for the order they are played in, but it doesn’t matter that you don’t know what the songs are about, and it doesn’t matter that you can’t understand the lyrics; you can feel the message in your bones. This record is like a slow climb up a freezing mountain, it keeps getting harder as you climb, and eventually you slip and fall. The songs just keep getting better with “III” and “IV” and “V”… get the picture?
There is seriously next to nothing on the Internet about the personnel of Grey Widow except they formed from the ashes of Brighton/Kent/South London bands of Dopefight, Parole, Thread and The Ergon Carousel. There aren’t even any good pictures of the band. In one I see the singer in what must be the dankest practice place I’ve ever seen, in another grainy image of two Marshall full stacks, flanked by a photo of who I can only assume is Sam Thredder who recorded the album at a place called Cros Nest Studio. I think I’ll be checking out their former bands to see if I’ve missed anything. I probably have.
The word that gets thrown around a lot in these circles is sludge, but aside from EYEHATEGOD and their brethren (and the multitudes that attempt to rip them off) rarely has that word meant much to me, but in this case I would say sludgy is the proper term for what these guys have going here. The only band I can think to compare them to is Thou but I feel like Grey Widow is a little more up-tempo. Sam did a great job of capturing the shear volume of this band: the vocals sound like they were recorded through a broken PA and the guitars are loud and proud, sometime to the detriment of the drums but turn it up and it’ll shred your speakers. I promise.
