Before I received the pack of three promo CDs from Czech Epidemie Records, I would have never thought that – next to the stuff of these ever-experimenter pioneers, Thy Catafalque & Woodland Choir – I would get a copy of the second full-length from the quite massive Gospel of the Future as well. They’re an old favourite of mine, at least a thousand times I’ve listened to their 2004 single and their 2007 debut yet, but the real surprise came later. I threw the full black disc into the player and pushed the play button… what I heard, it reminded me of many bands but at the same time I felt it actually was a sick hybrid as well and when I cast a look at the promo sheets I had to realise that I was listening to the new Gospel of the Future. By the way, our Czech label should really have attached some cover art or something to the pack, it’s pretty fucked up to send the disc only. Ok ok, of course I see the classy digipack format was limited to 500 pieces only but there are a few different possibilites too, like a papercase solution or something. Whatever, let’s learn a little about this Olomouc gang which came together at the end of 2003 to rehearse. There had been a frontman change at the very start, so on the full-lengths we can hear their friend Ultra, ripping his six-strings while gasping for air. When it comes to the genre in their case it’s a great riddle to find out – as well as their name – , since it basically is built of sludge or rather sludgecore, but neither HC, nor thrash or doom/drone can be shut out.
Compared to their 2007 debut (Gospel of the Future, also on Epidemie Records), they reduced the speed & slowed down a bit, their stuff became a little more psychedelic, complex and ethereal. The sound is quite great and though the externalities are praised to the skies by the label, since it’s been done by a certain American designer, Seldon Hunt, who is related to the stuff from Southern Lord or Hydra Head as well, I didn’t think it was such a big deal. Ok, I believe it may look classy in digipack format and the mixture of the cover shows less-or-more the nature & overall picture of the album. It’s a grand dirty chaos, with immeasurable depths and heights but the stuff rather drags & takes downer and downer instead of trying to arise. Practically, except for a few faster and black metalish parts, we become participants of a dirty & filthy fall, with a massive landing to expect. Influences include names like Neurosis, iSiS, Pelican, Crowbar, High on Fire, Iron Monkey, Buzzov-en, Doomdogs, Cult of Luna, Union of Sleep, Horn of the Rhino and here and there, because of the thrashy pulls, even the style of veteran battering ram Lair of the Minotaur appear, with their typical cowbell-based deviant wallows (for instance, the end of WBDO, it’s completely done in the vein of the aforementioned Chicago chariots). However the biggest part of the lyrical themes dwell in religious and historical reality, slowly we descend on the joyful, domesticated islands of glue addicts and pilleaters which throw an obvious hint of slow decay at our faces, of the passing we are being pushed towards. This drifting doesn’t include serious pains but one can feel the cavernous depths in the background; as a rodent which stuck in the bottom of accursed chasms, we take part in the trap of darkness and blindness. It’s a shivering dissolution, cast into methadone, stirring present times’ socreal manna at the bottom of a glass, just to bleed to death in a way as it was earlier portioned by the not-too-pornographic vacuum of the birth canal…
…reincarnation opens the slow process of existence, twisting in intestines, which at the end shall be devoured and reached by decay and it will throw our molt soul into nothingness, will cast our husks into the womb of the earth & dust as a feast to worms and bugs. Gospel of the Future – the prediction of the times to come…
/English translation by Vorst/
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