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The Gauntlet: Babylon Whores |
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Formed in 1994, the Helsinki Death Rock cult legends Babylon Whores have steadily grown up to be a force to be reckoned with. Call it metal, call it rock n' roll, but one thing's for sure: it all reeks of rancid madness and sweet damnation. All piss-dirty, crunching guitars and Elvis-from-Hell vocals, the stuff is musically diverse yet boasting a fearful integrity all of its own. Lyrically, the dark, venomous sarcasm of Babylon Whores is a log-book of a ship of fools on a quest for lost meaning, mirroring the world through western occult and philosophic traditions. We're talking god damned, apocalyptic rock n' roll here, all the way from Tupelo to Megiddo.
Formerly under the wings of the infamous UK-based Misanthropy Records, the Babylon Whores now continue blowing minds on Necropolis, who quickly signed the band after Misanthropy's demise.
With "King Fear" the band returns with a monster of an album. Decadent and mystifying, "King Fear" gives substance to a fever dream the listener needs to forge all for himself; no easy solutions at play here. As far as bad trips go, "King Fear" might be one of the more rewarding. Gathering momentum from the bitterly sarcastic opener "Errata Stigmata", it carries all the way to the title-track climaxing with the unspeakable homing down on the unwary listener. Recorded underground, mixed at a topnotch studio, the wall of sound present on the album is sometimes nothing short of remarkable, unconventional as it grows towards the end. Even the appearance of the grand old man of space rock, Nik Turner, somehow just makes sense-it could as well have been from some Michael Moorcock novel. And what was the point of it all? "To fulfill a 16th century prophecy", the band sheepishly respond, "It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it."
Both lyrically and musically, it is a wholesome beast, parts of which are hard, if impossible to separate. Remember, these guys mixed their first full-length solely on numerological basis ("and it shows", they admit in retrospect). Paradoxically enough, you could see a concept album in there, in the best ‘70s tradition, or on the other hand a consistent package of totally rocking songs. Many a strange treasure is unearthed on the Whores' journey to the arcane, yet others pushed further in the shadows. Make of it what you will, they probably wouldn't care, nor cease, until the stars are right again...
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