Review Summary: A tornado of broken glass; a thunderstorm that never strikes
The genre of black metal has expanded substantially from its humble beginnings somewhere in the 1980’s. After evolving from darker thrash metal into a genre of its own, black metal can now be seen to mingle and merge with just about every style of music under the sun--from jazz fusion, to world music, to bluegrass. While some bands seek to find their creative voices through innovation and expansion of the genre, others seek the opposite, contracting the genre in upon itself to keep “true” to its beginnings--what they perceive to be its heart, its core. Black metal began as a lo-fi, noisy, almost-painful-to-listen-to sub-genre of extreme heavy metal and that exactly what one-man act
Country Doctor seeks to replicate with its debut self-titled EP.
Similar to other noisy bands like
Axis of Light and
Paysage D’Hiver, Country Doctor’s debut provides the listener with another band that simply doesn’t care about their feelings--and in this genre, that’s often a good thing. From the very opening tremolo riffs of
December, it becomes obvious that this record is going to hurt; programmed drums blast with robotic apathy, riffs stab the ears with sharp, high-pitched screeches, and jagged howls and shrieks tear at one’s flesh like a rabid wolf. While hints of melodicism can be found throughout this opening piece, most of them go unnoticed as the vicious, whirling cacophony draws most of the listener’s focus. While the first track lasts less than five minutes, the feelings of dizziness and panic seem to last much longer.
In some sort of facetious parley, the project actually offers some respite from the previous onslaught with the demo’s second track, the eleven-minute drone/doom piece
First Snow. Featuring neither blast beats nor piercing shrieks of any sort, the track creates an atmosphere of utter dread--a rumbling, reverberating guitar drones on for much of the track underneath a constant, frantic lead. Together these two simple instruments press upon the listener creating a claustrophobic, suffocating feeling from which there is no escape. Or so it would seem.
The final piece,
Nothing, begins slowly with a melodic edge before once again erupting in a storm of percussion and painful shrieks which take up most of the track. As if losing steam altogether, its latter half eventually succumbs to the wiles of melodicism and slows down to a mid-pace before finally reaching its conclusion.
With its debut release Country Doctor establishes that it clearly does not exist with the intention of making friends. The biting riffs, pounding drums and claustrophobic droning are more likely intended to cause one to gnash their teeth than give one any sense of enjoyment. But, for those individuals that favor music of a much darker darker, painful sort, Country Doctor should surely stand out as a young project well worth taking an interest.
