Sunday Sludge: shEver – “Rituals”
Next time I volunteer for anything, I need to gather more details. Sure, I’ll work the beer garden! The
assumption is that I’ll see familiar faces, get a free t-shirt, and throw back some swiped tall-boys. I
didn’t know some dickhead would be onstage with a sock in his pants, belting out Tim McGraw
parodies. So of course, this morning’s Sunday Sludge required some patient, atmospheric doom
dusted with female aggression.
Switzerland’s shEver aren’t new to this. Eight years of the exhausting do-it-yourself approach is
longer than most could endure. A little patience pays off, though. And Rituals, their first album on
Jerusalem’s TOTALRUST label, is a showcase of patient, gradually-constructed sludge/doom hatred.
Filled with enough piss and vinegar to wither your black heart, these six tracks enter a trance and
bulldoze rhythms until you’re delirious with fatigue and giddy with malevolence.
From the onset of Ritual of Chaos, shEver’s sound is one of haunting, unsettling grind. Slow guitar
plucks challenge the pop and hiss of a nearby campfire until riffs enter and bully the backdrop. The
doom slowly flows into your settlement, while whispers and growls create a formidable and
captivating vocal tandem. It’s a surprising enticement, like the Sirens beckoning Odysseus. Jessica’s
riffs chop to a steady gear of destructive restraint until this opener concludes with hollowed haunts
barbing the muddy terrain.
Delirio is crafted in the vein of the classic sludge-doom crawl, complete with a hollow toilet-gurgle.
Rolling and riffing through a tortoise cadence, there’s a blood-trail being left behind. The quiet and
lilted tempo is brief, giving way to grinding buzz-saw mystery shrouded in a canopy of trees. Nadine’s
low-end clubs beasts in a remarkably accessible drudge. Subdued but pained, the song draws out the
demons. The ascent to crunchy grind burns through ritualistic chants of anguish, steadily snuffing out
itself. This is nasty stuff.
Serenity allows for a cool, somber scarring of Sarah’s drum taps to begin Je Suis Nee. Sludge drops
and stuns the tranquility, swirling into doomed bliss. Slow, patient, and ominous, the repetitive
“BONG” is cloaked in wool and utterly hypnotic. Tempos hover and scan the field for prey, while the
mirrored vocal is gorgeously disturbing. shEver are just hitting their stride stomp.
The buzz leads right into Souls Colliding, a perfect follow-up to Je Suis Nee. Jessica hits a cool,
shallow-wading strum while the band’s timing and restraint are brilliantly married. We’re slowly
lulled into the cobblestone creep that every doom-o-phile falls in love with. Guitars carve through
the wall of sound, while the pained growl is symptomatic of the track’s awesome patience. A midtempo
sludge roll emerges, Nadine’s bass crashes to the cellar, and the marriage of melodic, drawnout
rhythms and riffs plunge southward. The slow, Persian collapse is one the album’s brightest
spots.
Persistent and unrelenting is (You Are) The Mirror, a sludgy doom stagger that shaves bone with an
organized sustenance. The priestess vocal parallels the plodding rhythm until a tarred and feathered
slow-motion sickness has listeners rocking back and forth. Pensive and boiled-down, the highs and
lows are fully realized on this pensive, grinding shit-pit. The soggy buzz of approaching rain begins
the album’s closer, That He Na Te. The agonizing pacing and cultish hillside vocals employ an
expanding thump with painstaking poise. The emerging back-scratching growls, choppy guitar
stutter, and primal drums make for Rituals’ fitting final chapter.
That a doom-metal band composed of four Swiss enchantresses can teach listeners a thing or two
about taking their time is a marvel in its own right. That they make it sound so paradoxically soothing
and evil is an exercise in mastery. There’s a mythos doom bands strive for, at times coming off dark
to the point of being unapproachable or majestic to the point of being campy. shEver strike a balance
carved neatly into their own corner. Their craft didn’t rely on trickery or sleight-of-hand. They simply
let things simmer a while.
www.heavyplanet.net/2012/07/sunday-sludge-shever-rituals.html