Батюшка -- Литургия (review)

Band: Батюшка
Album: Литургия
Genre: black metal/Orthodox chant
Year: 2015
Label: Witching Hour Productions

The Polish black metal scene has produced yet another fantastic band.  Батюшка (Batushka - title of an Orthodox priest) put a unique spin on the genre by drawing influence from the Russian Orthodox faith.  The three members of the band are shrouded in mystery, but most people say that they are involved with other projects.
Литургия (liturgiya - liturgy) is the band's debut LP, and right off the bat I am impressed.  The album is divided into eight ектении (yektenii - litanies).  The music incorporates Orthodox liturgical chants which give the album a ritualistic feel.  The chanted vocal parts are not samples like most bands use.  The chants are composed and performed by the band; thus, a good portion of the vocal work is done in this manner.  Keeping in line with the theme of 'orthodoxy', the lead vocalist employs the traditional black metal scream.  Overall, these vocal parts are central in the context of the album.
The instrumentation, while not unique, is well composed and executed professionally.  The album is dotted with killer riffs and memorable melodies.  The drumming is predominantly blast beats, but they feel somewhat subdued by the mix (which honestly works here).  The bass has a nice tone and gets a chance to be the center of attention on "Ектения VI: Уповане."  Occasionally church bells chime in between tracks.  In fact, the album feels as if it is being performed in a Russian church.  The guitars create a cavernous atmosphere, and the chants and shrieks echo off the walls.  One can almost smell the air, thick incense.  Литургия aims at creating an atmosphere first and foremost, and it succeeds while also providing quality riffage.
The sum of these litanies is an eerie yet beautiful execution of Polish black metal.  Hopefully this is not a one-off project as I hope to hear more liturgical black metal from these mysterious, talented musicians.  You can give Батюшка a listen on YouTube here.


Rating: 4 / 5
Top Tracks:
Ектения I: Очищение
Ектения III: Премудрость
Ектения II: Благословение

godheadSilo -- The Scientific Supercake (guest review)

Band: godheadSilo
Album: The Scientific Supercake
Genre: sludge/experimental
Year: 1994
Label: Kill Rock Stars

While he can err on the side of excessive “hipsterism” and I don’t always agree with all of his opinions and analysis, I still find Chuck Klosterman one of my favorite journalists because of our common interests. Klosterman’s famous “VORM” article I read in his compilation X strived to find the value of each individual musician in a band- first by calculating a musician’s worth relative to their other band members, then calculating that band’s relative worth to other bands. Ambitious? Yes. Controversial? Certainly. I had listened to most of the bands at the top of the weighted spectrum (Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Radiohead) but one name that caught my eye was godheadSilo, intriguingly weighted the same as R.E.M. Curiosity = piqued.
Watching some of the band’s mid-nineties YouTube performances, I got a sense that you had to be there. I just knew a video recording couldn’t do these guys justice- it was just a bassist (Mike Kunka) and drummer (Dan Haugh) slamming away on their instruments with relentless fury. Both the band members have experienced hearing loss and discomfort from their brutal shows, and I knew I had to pick up The Scientific Supercake right away to further my artistic experience.
After a few listens, I concur that godheadSilo were certainly less songwriters than soundcrafters. There’s almost no way to describe the SOUND of this thing- if I had to compare it to any other record I’d probably pick Godflesh’s Streetcleaner, but listening to this album at any decent volume with good speakers will make your skin crawl. I’ve always been a sucker for more sonically than technically ambitious albums, so I found this right in my wheelhouse. Fun fact- if you turn the bass all the way up on your speakers and play this, it’ll blow them out. Not that I’m willing to try.
Opener “Nuts To You” has Kunka’s strangled vocals higher in the mix than any of the other songs, with Haugh’s mutated rhythms taking center stage. They settle into a more comfortable crushing tempo on “Birthday Sandwich”, but it isn’t until the freaky white-noise blasts on “Another Schizoid Ambelism” that the record truly reaches its hair-raising peak. The heart of the record is “Mr. Push Up”, which serves as the quintessential godheadSilo song; extended, creepy intro, percolating tempos, and harsh treble spurts. “I Luv U….Nicorns” has almost a pop sensibility to it, with catchy, ripping riffs, and “Hopefully They Will Learn” serves as a bleak, disturbing intro to the final two songs, which wind down all the thrashing somewhat. Short interludes are sprinkled throughout the record, ranging from melodic (“Two Peanuts Are Walking Down The Street”) to esoteric (“Ventriloqueef”).
Kunka and Haugh haven’t explicitly expressed the desire to record again since 1998’s Share the Fantasy, so we may have seen the last of this incarnation of heavy noise rock. While the riffs can get repetitive and janky at times, and Kunka doesn’t have much to offer as a vocalist, I haven’t even heard of anything close to the general sound and diverse range of influences this album draws from, and it hasn’t been commodified and diluted by legions of poor imitators. The sound of this album draws you in initially, but the strong songwriting and attention to detail gives it multitudes of replay value. Definitely recommended.


Rating: 7.2 / 10
Top Tracks:
Another Schizoid Ambelism
Mr. Push Up

Guest review by Adam Nohl