PILGRIM
Misery Wizard
Metal Blade (2012)
Rating: 5/10
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What is it with these doom bands being obsessed with the word “wizard”? Even before I’ve lent an ear to this American doom trio I’m finding myself looking out for more Black Sabbath word association games.
One glances at the band members and finds that their names are laughable. There’s drummer Krolg Splinterfist, who is apparently the “Slayer Of Man”, bassist Count Elric the Soothsayer, and finally we meet the vocalist / guitarist who likes to go by the name The Wizard. Whoooaaah, scary stuff! Well, almost…
The Rhode Island band’s full-length debut, Misery Wizard, clocks in at over 40 minutes, which is pretty long when you consider there are only six tracks, and immediately suggests at least a handful of these are going to be drawn out, mystical, monolithic slabs of depressive doom. And you’d be right.
So then, nothing new really? Nope. Pilgrim fit into that doomy void that is inhabited, and most certainly created by the likes of Saint Vitus. Rather than just opting for crushing landscapes of grey vision, they add a hint of legend and folklore to their creaky sound.
Opener ‘Astaroth’ at six and a half minutes is actually easier on the ears despite its repetition. The riffs are epically predictable, dredging up the same old Sabbath / Saint Vitus corpses and dragging them into the twenty-first century, giving them a much more sleepy ooze. The problem is, if you have the attention span of a gnat, or if you’ve heard so much of this doom before, you’ll do well to stick with this record. Some may describe the gothic atmospheres of the opening track’s mid-section as hypnotic, others may suggest the word boring. Vocally it’s nothing new either, an echoing warlord of a cry that caressed the Tony Iommi-inspired solos.
The bruising title track emerges from the dusk like some drunken elephant, plodding across the dreary landscape with no real cause. Surely the band’s sole existence isn’t to bore the wits out of the listener, or maybe, just maybe, like so many other doom bands, they expect their listeners to indulge in some type of drug, which to some may make Pilgrim a more enlightening experience.
With the likes of Confessor, Witchfinder General, Stillborn, Warhorse, Burning Witch, Count Raven, Cathedral, Sevenchurch et al in my collection, I don’t need a band that simply does not have the ability to stir my soul. Yes, you may call this epic doom metal and you may argue that its sole purpose is to numb the pain, but this only works if you haven’t heard countless other bands of this ilk.
This is a plodder of a record that sends me to the land of nod. With vocals buried in the mix, and stark riffs that barely travel beyond the speed of a tortoise, I find this aimless and barren, and only on the rare occasion coloured (ie ‘Adventurer’ with its slightly more uptempo earthquake riffing). Misery Wizard? More mundane wizard if you ask me.
Neil Arnold
