Church Of Void: Dead Rising

Finnish metallers get their doom compass in a twist

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Foolhardy of Church Of Void to announce that they are “the spearhead of the new wave of traditional heavy doom metal” when that bandwagon has been rolling since Reverend Bizarre and Warning inspired a glut of plummy-voiced, epic-riffed melancholy circa the mid-00s – plus Dead Rising sounds like most of its inspiration comes from latter-day Paradise Lost and Alice In Chains.

This Finnish quintet (featuring ex-members of black/folk metal also-rans Horna and Battlelore) lob in a few unorthodox tricks in an attempt to keep things interesting – witness the title track’s blastbeat and mellow acoustic chamber-orchestral outro – but generally the riffs and arrangements are unmemorable.

Although the playing and production is tight, crisp and slick, Harley Warlock’s vocals are at times wayward and over-ambitious, except when pastiching Aaron from My Dying Bride, as he does on Owls Are Listening and Little Child Lost. The latter, along with Entity Of Kalypso, are the only songs that warrant the ‘traditional doom’ tag, and they’re also the only good songs here.

Chris Chantler

Chris has been writing about heavy metal since 2000, specialising in true/cult/epic/power/trad/NWOBHM and doom metal at now-defunct extreme music magazine Terrorizer. Since joining the Metal Hammer famileh in 2010 he developed a parallel career in kids' TV, winning a Writer's Guild of Great Britain Award for BBC1 series Little Howard's Big Question as well as writing episodes of Danger Mouse, Horrible Histories, Dennis & Gnasher Unleashed and The Furchester Hotel. His hobbies include drumming (slowly), exploring ancient woodland and watching ancient sitcoms.