Richard HolmesVile Creature – Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm! (Prosthetic Records)
When, back in February, the final chords of Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm! were laid down at Hamilton, Ontario’s Boxcar Sound Recording, those present must have felt their spines tingle.
This record is special. Overwhelming, even.
You’ll be close to tears when it finally drifts to its conclusion.
But it will have been worth it.
Vocalist/drummer Vic and vocalist/guitarist/percussionist KW have been lighting a new way for doom since 2014, inhabiting the outer realms of sludge and resolutely forging their own identity.
And it seems that over A Steady Descent Into The Soil, A Pessimistic Doomsayer and Cast Of Static And Smoke, they were building up to this heart stopping record.
Opener Harbringer Of Nothing is a crushing behemoth covered in Neurosis and Cult Of Luna tats. When The Path Is Unclear gently builds tension before climaxing in a hypnotic, primal surge. And You Who Had Never Slept is even better, seeing Vic and KW locked together in an instinctive groove, and seemingly intent on levelling Ontario with a slew of stone age riffs.
But it’s the closing, two-part masterpiece of Glory! Glory! and Apathy Took Helm! which embeds this visceral opus deep within your soul. Past collaborator Laurel Minnes and her choir, Minuscule, imbue these songs with an ethereal beauty… and as Vic, KW and Bismuth’s Tanya Byrne weave colossal, primordial soundscapes into the final passages of Apathy Took Helm!, the end results are mesmerising.
A cathartic, deeply emotional album, Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm! should be essential listening in these desperate times.
