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SHEPHERDS CROOK
Black Lake

Luftwaffel (2018)
Rating: 8/10

Whoah!! The scary doom shit keeps on creepin’ into 2018, and now it’s the turn of Norwegian misery guts Shepherds Crook to infiltrate our souls with their debut album, Black Lake.

This one is 40-minutes of sinister, menacing, ominous sludge-doom built upon a foundation of scuzzy, distorted guitar tones and nasty vocal spits, which are no doubt gonna leave a dribble of black, dirty fluid down the chin of vocalist Nestor. I’ve heard some really good doomy stuff this year and from varying avenues, but this miserable offering is right up there; a sordid exploration of well-soiled traipses and trudges that are easy to take in but they sure do cause distress when being excreted!

I don’t know much about this duo, except to say that one Ole Hell is responsible for the instrumentation which presents itself – on each of the six tracks – as a wicked, swampy and above all wretched heap of doomed out psychosis.

Opener ‘Witch Hammer’ prides itself on being a sloppy burp, more so in the vocal rasps which sound akin to a crisp packet being scrunched up in the depth of winter (that’s just how I hear things!!), while the music is a rough laborious squelch of blackened blubber that boils, shifts, boils again then flabs to the floor. ‘Witch Hammer’ is a vile, decrepit little outing offering a corpulent guitar smirk threaded with a nice sorrowful lead.

In comparison, ‘Outlaw Speed King’ is somewhat a contradiction, with a Black Sabbath-esque ‘Hole In The Sky’ groove but still dirtied by the despicable vocal sneers which give such puerile and yet putrid edge, and I love it.

‘Lizard Tongue Wizard’ is murky and creepy with its introduction. However, you just know you’re going to be hit by a filthy guitar traipse, and we’re soon back to the familiar sludge territory as Nestor’s vocal snarls become a tad more drawn out, but they really do make a difference from hearing the usual stoned wails. In fact, this is some seriously wicked vocal horror as each track emerges, with ‘Dead Sky’ following a similar vile path as the chords buzz. Only this time there’s a melodic variance, a trickle of wistful melancholy that weaves its way through the black heap.

The closing, eight-minute title track comes with bulbous intent. The riff is big, blubbery and grubby, rolling deep and thick as the drum acts as a steely backbone. But as the song develops there’s a slower passage of misery to contend with, a dragging sensation provided as the track lurches to its climax, and we’re left aghast at such a snarling, primitive and soiled piece of work.

Neil Arnold

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