He Whose Ox Is Gored - The Camel, The Lion, The Child

He Whose Ox Is Gored - The Camel, The Lion, The Child
Released by: Bleeding Light Records
Released on: October 9th, 2015.
Purchase From Bleeding Light Records

Hailing from Seattle, He Whose Ox Is Gored is made up of Brian McClelland on guitar and vocals, Lisa Mungo on synths, keyboards and vocals, Mike Sparks on bass and John O'Connell on drums. These guys have been around since 2009 and their sound is, if nothing else, unique. There's a heavy prog influence here and you'll notice immediately the influence of Italian horror movie soundtracks from the likes of Goblin deftly weaving in and out of each one of the eight tracks that make up this almost hour long collection of songs.

Oathbreaker sets the tone from the start - moody synths, noodling guitars and a ridiculously tight rhythm section are a big part of what these guys are all about. As the nearly five minute opener progresses, whoever, things start to get a bit heavier. It's subtle, but it's there. Around three and a half minutes though, subtlety goes out the window and things get noticeably thrashier, but never losing that proggy sound.

Where the first track was almost an instrumental, Omega is different. The vocals are a bigger deal here, the drums as heavier, the synths wavier and the whole beat just bigger and broader. McClelland howls his way through the track, there are moments here where it sounds like he's going to explode. There's a weird ending to this one that comes at you completely out of left field. Crusade is one of the longer tracks here, though none of the songs are what most would consider short, as it clocks in at almost eight minutes. The melody to this one is a bit more strongly defined, but the band still goes into some really strange musical directions. Some neat harmonies in the background vocals make McClelland's lead vocals sound even more tortured.

We shift gears again with the six minute Zelatype, a track that puts us at the half way mark. It segues in perfectly from the preceding track, some mellow keyboards and basic but effective drumming opening the door for the bass and the guitar to smoothly work their way into the mix. What begins as calm and almost soothing does quickly build to a more aggressive track around the one minute mark, but it never ditches the calmer sound entirely, even when the vocals go nuts again.

Alpha sees Lisa Mungo handle the vocal duties, at least to start. About half way through her pretty, almost angelic, vocals get replaced by McClelland's ferocity. As such, we get some pretty interesting contrast in this song that helps to set it apart from the others on the record. Magazina starts off like a more traditional metal track in some ways, the guitars are up in the mix and the vocals are aggressive, but the keyboards and the whole weird tone of the song keep it from getting predictable and definitely give it a prog rock anchoring. Cairo is over seven and a half minutes long, it begins with a sort of ambient sound, heavy on keyboards and not much else. That changes about two minutes in when an insanely thick bass line starts the change in tempo to a more aggressive sound. McClelland's vocals once again leave little to the imagination in terms of mood - they're angry - but the song switches back and forth between soothing and genuinely unsettling rather easily, which serves to keep the listener off guard.

The final track on the album is Weighted By Guilt, Crushed Into A Diamond, a mammoth nine and a half minute slab of weird, artsy experimentation in sound. Like a lot of the songs on this record it starts with the calm before the storm. Calm, controlled drumming over which the keyboards build kill the first four minutes but as the half way mark approaches, the title of the track makes more sense. Things get heavier, crushing if you will, and the band work themselves into a pretty intense frenzy.

This is weird stuff, but it's easy to get lost in it. Put it on with the lights down, the volume up and let play. Concentrate on it, give it your full attention and The Camel, The Lion, The Child turns out to be a wholly unique listening experience. It's metal but it's not metal. It's prog but it's not prog. It's pretentious but accessible… at least to those with a taste for something different. At times this does feel like an exercise in mood and atmosphere, in creating a feeling more than traditional songwriting, but there's something very cool and very interesting going on with this band.

No promo videos to link to at the time of this writing but here's some live footage from a recent show in Los Angeles…