{"id":67705,"date":"2018-01-30T00:00:10","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T00:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=67705"},"modified":"2018-03-24T19:48:12","modified_gmt":"2018-03-24T19:48:12","slug":"album-review-shepherds-crook-black-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-shepherds-crook-black-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"SHEPHERDS CROOK – Black Lake (2018) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

SHEPHERDS CROOK
Black Lake<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nLuftwaffel (2018)<\/span>
Rating: 8\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Whoah!! The scary doom shit keeps on creepin\u2019 into 2018, and now it\u2019s the turn of Norwegian misery guts Shepherds Crook to infiltrate our souls with their debut album, Black Lake<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve 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!<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know much about this duo, except to say that one Ole Hell is responsible for the instrumentation which presents itself \u2013 on each of the six tracks \u2013 as a wicked, swampy and above all wretched heap of doomed out psychosis.<\/p>\n

Opener \u2018Witch Hammer\u2019 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\u2019s 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. \u2018Witch Hammer\u2019 is a vile, decrepit little outing offering a corpulent guitar smirk threaded with a nice sorrowful lead.<\/p>\n

In comparison, \u2018Outlaw Speed King\u2019 is somewhat a contradiction, with a Black Sabbath<\/a>-esque \u2018Hole In The Sky\u2019 groove but still dirtied by the despicable vocal sneers which give such puerile and yet putrid edge, and I love it.<\/p>\n

\u2018Lizard Tongue Wizard\u2019 is murky and creepy with its introduction. However, you just know you\u2019re going to be hit by a filthy guitar traipse, and we\u2019re soon back to the familiar sludge territory as Nestor\u2019s 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 \u2018Dead Sky\u2019 following a similar vile path as the chords buzz. Only this time there\u2019s a melodic variance, a trickle of wistful melancholy that weaves its way through the black heap.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s a slower passage of misery to contend with, a dragging sensation provided as the track lurches to its climax, and we\u2019re left aghast at such a snarling, primitive and soiled piece of work.<\/p>\n

Neil Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SHEPHERDS CROOKBlack Lake Luftwaffel (2018)Rating: 8\/10 Whoah!! The scary doom shit keeps on creepin\u2019 into 2018, and now it\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,3910],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-shepherds-crook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67706,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67705\/revisions\/67706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}