'Woe To You Oh Earth And Sea'

Available from 14 Caldermere, Spennymoor, County Durham DL16 6XT, England.

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T HE three skulls and inverted cross on the CD sleeve are flanked by the
words 'We sold our souls for Doom and Drone', which is a perfect mission statement for TenHornedBeast's continuing obsession with neo-Industrial and Metal. The six tracks on this album are definitely not for the faint-hearted. 'Silver Horses Brought Us Here' begins menacingly, like an omen of things to come. A Doom-laden guitar riff is overtaken by a shimmering metallic ambience and then returns to assume the form of a cautious plucking, picking its way through the minefield of droning waves that lurk in the background like a poltergeist in a haunted air-raid shelter.

'Cult of the Black Horn' begins as a slow and remotely militaristic sludge of percussion and growling guitar. An alarm bell increases in pitch and sails through the increasingly metallic storm like an antiquated fire engine caught in a fit of hysteria. It's very, very dark. So dark, in fact, that it sounds like someone attempting to transcend the frontiers of musical extremity. And that, of course, appears to be the very purpose behind this macabre experiment in sound. Combined with a gaggle of screeching frequencies, the rattling snare drums and crashing cymbals are enough to create an aggressive and intimidating atmosphere on their own, but the guitar takes it one step further. It's a marriage made in heaven. The corrosive natures of two genres have been melded together like the parts of a stitched carcass on a Frankensteinian slab.

The deep rumbling that characterises 'Ustabo' amid several almost-tuneful melodies reminds me of 'The Clangers'. But in this case, however, it's as though someone mischievous has fucked with the Soup Dragon's brain. A comparatively soft interlude somewhere around the five-and-a-half-minute mark is followed by an enchanting soundscape in which the natural tendency to drift away on an ambient breeze is tempered by a guitar that simply won't let you.

'Give Death Take Death', the longest track on an album mostly comprised of long tracks, sounds as though it has been named after Nietzsche's Zarathustra. To kill and be killed. To act and accept the consequences of one's own actions. Perhaps this is why Chris Walton, formerly of Endura, put so much of his own blood, sweat and tears into making this album in the first place? Every true artist is consumed by his work. Such is the price of genius. And if ever there was a spark of pure genius on this album, this is it. In fact it runs through this track like a sharpened blade through Ken Bigley's gurgling windpipe. The drones are lengthier than before, but then so are the guitar strums that pause for breath between hissing waves of energy. This is about as sinister as it's possible to get and the tension is absolutely unrelenting. There is a slight Oriental feel at certain points, steaming through cacophonous fissures of pulsating drones and wicked distortion. One for summer days, open windows and neighbouring barbeques. 'Come And Make Me Holy Again' starts off as swirling Noise caught in an upward surge of slightly higher-pitched frequencies, aerodrome stereophonics and an erratic bass drum. It's a drunken Bill Ward performing solo at Heathrow Airport as every plane in the vicinity decides to land at once. Again, the ambience easily overshadows what I thought would be another Doomfest similar to the previous album, but there are moments of harshness scattered around towards the end of this track which always threaten to pin you up against the wall like a bully about to ram a knitting needle through your eardrum. That never quite happens, but the potential is always there.

'Father of the Frosts' returns to the heavy Doom of former glories. Not in the long, drawn-out style so often used in the Metal genre of the same name, but more akin to the calculated and tormented string-teasing of 'Silver Horses Brought Us Here'. And there are several guitar effects used here. Even the main drone that provides a backdrop for the booming bass-strings has been sculpted from a disfigured mass of granite guitar. Back in May 2004, when I reviewed TenHornedBeast's 'Ten Stars Ten Horns', I described it as 'exciting, unique and exhilarating'. But I certainly didn't think that 'Woe To You Oh Earth And Sea' could possibly surpass the first album. I was wrong. And it has. Chris Walton went through hell and back to release this album. It left him physically exhausted, mentally shattered and nursing a serious headache for several days. And I can see why. But make no mistake, the effort was worth it and I shall let this album toy with my brain for a long time to come.