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THE CROOKED WHISPERS
Satanic Melodies

Self-released (2020)
Rating: 7.5/10

While I’m not sure as to how whispers can be crooked, Satanic Melodies is the latest drone-cum-doom experience to clog up the airwaves. Raining mud outta Los Angeles, California, this terrible trio will be surely making a name for themselves with a debut platter that’ll resonate around the four corners of Hell.

Thankfully, there’s not a wizard, a mountain, or over-use of Black Sabbath-isms in this weed-drenched plodder. And yet while I’m often dismissive of such satanically stoned sweet leaves, The Crooked Whisperers actually stand out because of that vile, scornful vocal sneer which has more in common with a black metal ethos.

Imagine then something akin to a more bogged down Uncle Acid, but with extra squalid vim in that vocal. Although once you get past the opening strains of what is essentially bog rock, ‘Sacrifice’ flows rather nicely, oozing like some slow moving oil slick in which we’re beckoned in a sinister fashion by a haggard voice that yelps, “Come to me, come to me”.

Yeah, musically it’s all rather familiar fuzz; fat bong-choked blubber at a snail’s pace. But once inside this sooty coven, there’s no room to breathe let alone nod, as this US act provides extreme fluff to the stylus and heavyweight lumber daubed in occult aesthetics.

Not many of you are probably familiar with obscure doomsters Locust Fork who only made one album – Bring Forth… – back in 2014, but that platter has that same rusty, blood-soaked charm, except that Satanic Melodies is sludgier.

‘Evil Tribute’ continues to move with the pace of a dying sloth; the percussion a primitive clod of mud thrown at the skins. But the eerie croons of “I can smell the death, it’s growing near… Here come the horsemen, they smell your fear” are most likely to prompt you to grab the crucifix rather than the smouldering joint. And that’s the subdued yet creeping joy of this 30-minute crawl.

An overwhelming blackness surrounds like the walls of a coffin as ‘Profane Pleasure’ simmers in pitch black grinding horror, while a massive bloated riff trudges with syrupy aplomb as vocalist Anthony Gaglia blurts “Demonic sounds from beyond” amid a slow-moving treacle of bile.

The title track trickles like a horror movie soundtrack, where stark clangs and strange noises all add to the atmosphere before that slug-chewed guitar tone lumbers once again, heaving like some limbless golem of gloominess reaching from the forgotten dust-bowl of a cellar hidden within that creaky mansion on the hill. “I am the slave of Lucifer…” spits Gaglia, before echoing, “Satanic melodies, I hear them in my head, I can’t breathe, I can’t think…”. And I know the feeling, engulfed am I by the flames and fumes of this fully cobwebbed haunted house of horror.

‘Last Call’ is an odd way to end the album, just over two-minutes of peculiar noises, and yet I’m gagging for more, strangely mesmerised by what is at times predictable in its music, but buoyed, albeit it in evil fashion, by its snide vocal croaks.

Satanic Melodies is a solid debut from a cult I’d join in a heartbeat.

Neil Arnold

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