shEver/Spancer – Split 10” (Nocebo Records)
By Jay Snyder
January 23, 2014
Two veterans of sludgy, sleaze doom
unite for a devious slab of riffage that howls at the darkness and pitches empty
whiskey bottles at the moon. The Switzerland snipers shEver and the German
U-boat crew Spancer couldn’t possibly be a better pairing, each contributing one
exclusive side taker to this 1,000 kilo wax bastard.
The formerly all-female hypno hate doomers, shEver impressed me in 2012 with their 2nd
full-length Rituals on the always reliable Totalrust Music. Since then
the band parted ways with bassist/backing vocalist Nadine and added a fine
fellow in Chris to occupy the low-end. These evil enchantresses and their new
warlock recruit conjure up a bass-y, buzzy Tibetan doom meditation similar to
the one that Om brought back from the mountaintop monk population. shEver’s
composition, the 12 minute long yeti slayer, “Path of Death,” braves its way
through an avalanche of elemental doom and blackened altitude sickness that’s
sure to test the threshold of your vertigo tolerance. Alexandra’s chanted clean
vocals are transmitted from a cloud obscured peak, wrapped in serene cumulus
from the foggy bass lines and Jessica’s lightly delayed and echoed guitar
chords. Sarah holds the time-keeping to a balance of sparse but deafening tom
and kick centered percussive heartbeats. The guitar melodies are draped in
Eastern mysticism, but soon turn to violent downtempo strokes of trebly,
Norwegian frost played at a hypothermic doom pacing. What started as a spacey,
chakra aligning vocal performance soon turns to bitter cold depression screaming
and zen ending death vomit, as Chris switches his warm bass tone onto the fully
distorted scuzz-fuzz setting beneath the guitar’s harmonic permafrost. The band
tests patient students of the doom arts with a lengthy outro of hymnal guitar
feedback and whooped bass amp drone that brings their piece to a gracious close.
I’m really into everything I’ve heard from shEver thus far, and this tune
reminds me that I still have some work to do on their back catalog.
Spancer never lets me down, and it’s nice to see the quintet offering up
fresh material while they continue welding the titanium hull of their upcoming,
4th full length album, which is still probably a long ways off from being
finished knowing the band’s logistics program. “The Eagle” is doing much to
quench my panging guts and cure my cabin fever for more Spancer doom in the
meantime. These guys are one of sludge’s best kept secrets, and here they
torpedo the competition with over 15 minutes of bluesy, USS Seawolf tough doom
that’s lost at sea in a mid ocean quagmire of York Wiese’s wah smothered,
southern guitar seaweed. The combat fleet of Ingo Wedemann and the Kaptain load
the deck gun with their patented, freighter sinking dual bass guitar spray fire,
while drummer Jan Weihie manages to traverse the vast oceans of doom with a
surprising tonnage of tricky snare fills. Admiral Markus Munz still commands the
vocal post with authority and deserves a medal of honor for his throat’s ten
year tenure of depth charge abuse. Ancient philosophy and transcendental
ascendance still permeate his lyrics, and his rusted over screams and guttural
growls reckon of a larynx slashed by a malfunctioning propeller. Eventually the
southern-tinged, blues doom implodes into aqua dementia phasing and salt water
saturated flanging FX that creates a hallucinatory ghost ship of psychedelic
doom. Wiese drops a wah lead with a serious case of the bends before the band
dips into a derelict amp drone, and later a full fathom doom groove that
serenades the eardrums with a sirens’ song of blues-driven, Vitus/Sabbath
subterfuge that dwells in the shadows amongst Innsmouth’s mer-denizens. A
whirlpool swirl of 70s psyche soloing drowns all survivors of the band’s barrage
in the whitewater wake left behind from the indestructible dirge vessel that
these cutthroat sailors steer into the Bermuda Triangle.
Splits don’t
get much better than this. Spancer on one side, shEver on the other…honestly,
how can you lose? For fans of severe doom and sludge repercussion, this is a
must have split. Hopefully both bands will be back with full-length releases
soon, but in the meantime you’ll log in plenty of nautical miles on this voyage.
Don’t miss out as this is limited to 500 copies, and has already been out a few
months. Great stuff!
source: http://hellridemusicforums.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=27014