Church of Misery - Born Under a Mad Sign

Angry Metal Guy 70

I first came across Church of Misery when Houses of the Unholy had just released back in 2009. It was perhaps the most American-sounding record I’d ever heard; riffs like roaring Buicks, barking sludge vocals dirty as desert sands dumped in Mississippi waters, not to mention its obsession with serial killers. So imagine my surprise when the formation turned out to be Japanese and were in fact among the country’s first doom purveyors. Though I much loved Houses, the band dropped off my radar since, until I went digging among the recently passed promos and found out we’d collectively missed the opportunity to review Born Under a Mad Sign. Time to rekindle an old flame.

It has been a tumultuous decade for Church of Misery. The line-up has had a habit of falling to pieces entirely, only for bassist and lynchpin Tatsu Mikami to rake replacements into a pile and keep on trucking. Given the constant state of flux in the line-up, it’s a miracle the sound has remained more or less the same. Few bands worship at the altar of the almighty riff like the Church: huge, crunchy, filthy, straight out of the desert and dripping with distortion. Each track is construed around two or three colossal rusty hooks, supplemented by squealing, warbling solos that plunge a healthy dose of psychedelics into the pulsing veins. Fuelling this pile-driving machine is a deliberate pounding drum and a thrumming bass bent on sowing terror. This iteration of the band finds Kazuhiro Asaeda back on the mic for the first time since the band’s mid-90’s origins, and his nasty, hoarse croon has a sardonic mania befitting the serial killer motif.

Despite how barebones the sound is on the surface, there’s a good amount of variety between the 7 tracks. Opener “Beltway Sniper (John Allen Muhammad)”¹ is a plodding, grinding monster with enough swagger to make a gaggle of damsels swoon right before they get shot in the head with a Bushmaster rifle. “Most Evil (Fritz Harmann)” turns the pacing down and the hysteria up as Asaeda gets the spotlight, belting ‘Say goodbye to my life!’ with gleeful madness. “Freeway Madness Boogie (Randy Kraft)” goes the other way, spewing nitro into the engine and careening down the highway raining fire and pistons all the way. The band’s got a history of including a cover of the old and obscure, and this edition has “Spoiler,” originally by Haystacks Balboa, where the Church lets their blues flag fly with a metric fuck-ton of Hammond organ.

The only letdown is in the tail. “Come and Get Me Sucker (David Koresh)” gets points for the rousing fist-pumping chorus but isn’t quite as focused as its predecessors otherwise, and “Butcher Baker (Robert Hansen)” is just too repetitive in both riffs and vocals, making for a disappointing closer. But the band gets nothing else wrong. The production is thick, meaty, and thankfully not louder than appropriate. The guitar sounds at turns gargantuan and sun-baked, and the bass looms large in the background, throbbing and thrumming with violent vigor. Even the samples, which most bands trip up on, are well placed and not too long, simply adding to the true crime documentary vibe with snippets of newscasters and even David Koresh himself.

It’s been 7 years and about 12 line-ups since the last Church of Misery album, but it seems nothing can diminish the freight train of riffs coming from Tokyo. Despite a snooze-worthy finale, Born Under a Mad Sign is an undeniable wealth of thundering riffs, earth-quaking bass and unhinged vocals, sketching the sordid history of mass murderers onto your skull with a sledgehammer. If every true crime podcast was this heavy, the Spotify servers would come crashing through the floor. The guitarist here, Yukito Okazaki, was on loan from Eternal Elysium, so there’s likely another ‘help wanted’ sign plastered on the church doors. But I have faith in Mikami’s leadership to keep the train on the tracks, fill the ranks, and continue delivering some of the best damn doom metal on the scene.



Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 192 kbps mp3
Label: Rise Above Records
Websites: churchofmisery.net | facebook.com/church-of-misery-official
Releases Worldwide: June 16th, 2023

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