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Temple Of Dagon - Revelations Of The Spirit
Released by: Black Voodoo
Released on: June 9th, 2015.
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California based Temple Of Dagon release their latest offering, a four track EP entitled Revelations Of The Spirit, through Black Voodoo Records. It's a concept record of sorts, as it charts the life and times of a character they refer to as The Horrid King. These guys have been around for a few years now, bringing Lovecraftian inspired metal to an unsuspecting public, and this new release sees them once again tossing stoner rock, doom, thrash, traditional metal, punk and grindcore into a musical blender of sorts.
Made up of Dwane Burgess on vocals, Kyle Hertz and Jacob Smyle on guitar, Alex LiCausi on bass and backing vocals and Nelson Lopez drums, the band kick things off with the opening track The Evocation. At just over two minutes it's quick and to the point but it has an effectively weird into with some animal noises over top of weird percussion sounds. It's almost tribal. The distortion rises in the mix though, and once it gets up into the top the guitars, bass and drums all kick in nicely. Things get fast and heavy and super tight - but no vocals until the minute and a half mark. An interesting touch, you expect it to play out as an instrumental. From here we get the second track, The Horrid King, a longer song at almost seven minutes in length. It's got a hardcore style backbone to it, a groove even, with the guitars tuned into some eighties thrash era influences - it works. Burgess' vocals grunt and groan overtop, hard to decipher at times, but they suit the music really well. This is a riff-centric track to be sure, but listen to it more than once and you start to appreciate the other elements, not just the guitar playing. The vocals grow on you, the band sounds tight and polished enough that you notice while still playing a pretty raw style. It's good stuff.
Flip this over for the third track, The Wandering Spirit (1), which runs almost six minutes. Some serious riffs pull you in immediately and then, once you're there, they band switches things up a bit by playing faster and grittier than you expect. The vocals come in, everything is righteously angry and pissed right off, and it's pretty damn impressive. Catchy too - with some interesting dueling vocals going on at times that might catch you a bit off guard. This track is worth the price of admission alone.
The EP comes to a finish with Nexus Of Reality, a five minute track that starts off at a quick med-tempo and then puts the pedal down and just goes for it. This is thrashy, fast and angry and it just blasts from the get go. It slows down for a quick bass-centric breakdown, and again the band play with some interesting tempo changes, but it's pretty much balls out metal from start to finish.
With only four songs, this one does its job and leaves you wanting more. It's raw without sounding bad (in fact the production is rock solid) and it's interesting, creative, intense and heavy all at the same time. Definitely worth checking out.
