Lmst

By Dr. A.N. Grier

Liminal Dread Productions has been on a roll with releases in the past year. Some really took it home (Vanessa Funke), while others (Weep) didn’t quite hit the mark. Now, they are back with the debut record from LA’s newest thrash band, Wisdom & Fools. As far as I can gather, this two-person outfit was a collaboration between vocalist/guitarist Philip Vargas and bassist John Ramirez, who fronts the one-person progressive death outfit Parasite. The only thing missing is a drummer. So, they bought a computer and did some shit. Prophecy is a brief record that tries to push the boundaries of thrash, technical thrash, and death. The result is a riff machine with harmonizing guitar leads and vocals in the vein of Pantera and Throwdown. It’s an odd combination of elements that could be an absolute hit or a thrash fire behind Albertson’s. Either way, its thirty-six-minute construction should at least get you through your morning coffee shits.

My favorite part about the band’s inception was their first release, a 2020 collab with Parasite called St. Angry (A Loving Tribute to Metallica’s St. Anger). Yep, you read that correctly. These four cover songs include “Dirty Window” and “Sweet Amber,” which absolutely no one asked for, especially considering that I prefer the unfiltered vocals of Papa Het to those of Vargas. After a couple of singles and an EP, Prophecy finally arrives as the band’s official debut LP. With eight original tracks that don’t include St. Anger covers, Wisdom & Fools set out with their programmed drums to leave a mark on the Bay Area thrash scene. But will that mark be a notch on the Big 4 bludgeoning club or that skid mark I had to wash out of my speedo?

The first thing you notice from the opening number, “Escaping Eden,” is its guitar chops and the bass that pops and rumbles like old-school Sadus. But after charging along with one of the better thrash licks on the album, the vocals kinda diminish the mood. The song becomes garbled with all the riff and mood changes, even if the death textures and stomping riff on the back end are nice touches. One of the best tracks on the album is “The Devil in a House of God.” The screaming vocals and heavy riffs deliver the goods, alternating between thrash mixtures and interesting, swirling guitar leads. The song also includes melodic elements, ’80s metal flourishes, and a headbangable interlude that—for some demented reason of my own—resembles the entrance song to WWE’s Hardy Boyz.

After the album comes out attacking, the back half introduces more melodic elements in back-to-back pieces, “Thorns” and “Perpetualis.” While “Thorns” is riddled with some interesting, old-school soloing and harmonizing guitar action, the song’s foundation is completely forgettable. And, once again, the vocals don’t help to bring this track up to the melodeath caliber it should be. Sadly, “Perpetualis” is an identical song to its predecessor. Repeating the verse, pre-chorus, and chorus sections for most of the track, the only interesting part is the harmonizing leads toward the end. Thankfully, the closer brings some semblance of justice to the previous tracks. “Husk” is a marching thrasher that dabbles in death-thrash territories before unveiling its own melodic tendencies. But the lush textures of the song’s outro are not enough to save the lackluster songwriting of the two previous tracks.

Prophecy is an enigma. While the performances are undoubtedly great—especially those harmonizing leads and the gigantic bass presence—the songwriting is lacking. Balancing between being a standard thrash band and a technical one, Prophecy achieves too much and too little at the same time. There are a lot of riffs on this platter, but they tend to blend rather than add memorable weight to the overall song. As stated before, the vocals also do little to contribute, and I find myself ignoring them to focus on the guitar and bass. All that to say, there is definitely something here that, with some restraint, could be great. Of all the songs, “The Devil in a House of God” seems to know what it wants to do, but most of the album becomes predictable, as if the riffs are used to promote the impressive leads and soloing sections. I’m not quite ready to write this band off, but this ain’t the album I wanted.

Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: WAV
Label: Liminal Dread Productions
Websites: wisdomfools.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/wisdomandfools
Releases Worldwide: April 25th, 2025

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-war-160610473.html

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans
-Jeffrey Goldberg

Weep – The Constant Strain of Life Review

By Cherd

My schooling and professional experience is in the making and teaching of visual fine art, and every once in a while this music reviewing gig reveals close parallels to consider. As I listen to Minneapolis-based one-man blackgaze project Weep and his debut full-length The Constant Strain of Life, I’m reminded of the differences between drawing and painting. Most artists who paint, draw, and vice versa value each medium for different reasons. Painting is a somewhat major production with lots of moving parts. There are layers. If you don’t like a mark, you paint over it, and it becomes part of a nearly invisible self-contained history. Painting builds or obfuscates spatial illusion in a push-and-pull process. Color theory has to be considered. Drawing is much more immediate. It can be detailed and meticulous, but it’s comparatively uncomplicated. There’s the hand, the tool, and the mark on the surface. It’s like seeing someone think out loud. Musical equivalents are like this: progressive death metal is painting. Raw black metal is drawing. Big band jazz is painting, but John Coltrane going on long improvised tangents on his sax is drawing.

The Constant Strain of Life is, in our dichotomy, drawing. Weep’s lone member, Cerastes, runs post-punk and shoegaze through a raw black metal filter but without the raw part. Comparisons can be made to fellow Minnesota bands Ashbringer or Wishfield, but this is a much more stripped-down, straightforward affair. How stripped down? If you had told me this was a demo, I wouldn’t have batted an eye. There are a few points of stylistic variation, like “Coffin Varnish,” which leans into doom tempos and solemnity, while “Desaturated Soul,” commits completely to shoegaze. One gets the idea that Cerastes has listened to a fair bit of screamo, but thankfully that influence on Weep is more residual than overt. The Constant Strain of Life spends the vast majority of its time squarely in that “post-black” space.

Cerastes’ “just the facts, ma’am” style contributes to both the album’s charm and its weaknesses. Production-wise, each instrument sits side by side with the others rather than combines with them. One can almost see every note played floating in space. This works fine on songs like the two that open the album. “Late Autumn” and “Must We Continue” both rely on buoyant indie rock guitar lines played over blackened rhythms to give them an immediate hook. When heft and urgency are needed, however, that space between elements becomes an issue. Take the title track. Once the song kicks into third gear and the chugging guitar riff starts at the 1:30 mark, it’s all too sparse a sound to convey the weight Weep is going for. It doesn’t do enough to raise the intensity, so the breakdown that follows also fails to land. This happens again with “The Sour Scent of Ozone,” as the chugging riff over the programmed drum d-beat comes off as flat-footed rather than energetic. More experimentation with the guitar tone could have potentially helped this. The tone, and indeed the riff, feel too stock-standard.

The issue of seemingly stock riffs emerges elsewhere, from “Late Autumn” to “Coffin Varnish” and “This is the End,” adding to the demo-like quality mentioned above. There are plenty of times listening to The Constant Strain of Life when I wonder why Cerates didn’t just commit to true raw black metal. It wouldn’t fix some of the writing issues, but it would imbue texture and atmosphere that the record could seriously benefit from. The Constant Strain of Life is best when it splits the poles between stark post-punk and black metal. “Must We Continue” is an early highlight and an example of the simple riffs coming off as effortless rather than uninspired. The strongest run starts with the one true shoegaze song “Desaturated Soul” and ends with another post-punk leaning song in album closer “Choosing to Live.” The clean vocals on “Desaturated Soul” are pitch-perfect for the style and I wish Weep would incorporate them more often for contrast and variety.

The Constant Strain of Life may be drawing in our drawing/painting dichotomy, but it alternates between drawing-as-finished-piece and sketchbook entries. Stark, blackened post-punk suits Cerates wonderfully, but more layers and color are needed when Weep reaches for bigger emotional payoffs, or when raging speed is required. There’s some good playlist material here, but as a full-length album, it could use some more time on the easel.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Liminal Dread Productions
Website: weep.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: October 25th, 2024

#25 #2024 #AmericanMetal #Ashbringer #BlackMetal #Blackgaze #LiminalDreadProductions #Oct24 #Review #Reviews #TheConstantStrainOfLife #Weep #Wishfield