One of the best things about a committed relationship is sharing hobbies. I play D&D with my wife and we go to shows and festivals together. Robert and Elis Wilson play in Warpriest. More accurately, Mr. Wilson is essentially the entirety of Warpriest, handling the guitar, bass, and drum machine, doing all the songwriting, and handling the lion’s share of the vocals. Mrs. Wilson does the artwork and sings on a few tracks. Still, it’s heartwarming to see life partners enjoying a collaborative creative process together. According to an informative biography, Mr. Wilson—a traditional metal aficionado—played in a few unnamed bands in the early ’90s before starting a family and giving up music for several decades. A couple of years ago he dusted everything off to mess around in Garageband, and his attempts to refine the results became Warpriest. Seldom is a band’s conception so audible in the music.
Gloombreaker sounds exactly like someone who hasn’t played or composed music in 30 years messing around on Garageband, trying to emulate Candlemass and Black Sabbath. There is barely a second across Gloombreaker that doesn’t sound as amateur as it truthfully is. Many of the riffs are barely riffs at all, they’re just plodding sequences of vaguely related chords. The solos are worse. The opener “Dogs of Doom” has a solo in the middle that is just a bunch of sustained notes bent this way and that. Whereas drum machines tend to sound lifeless in the wrong hands, this one sounds so bored it’s ready for an EMP to put it out of its misery. And I haven’t even gone into the vocals yet. The lady of the house is at her best when she keeps her tone low-key and atmospheric, but when she tries something with more power, she swerves off-track, across the gravel, over the tires, and into the screaming audience. Husband dearest is worse, for he attempts many things and is terrible at every single one, from a drunkenly swerving epic doom tone to weirdly misplaced falsetto squeaks to a strangled, croaky scream.
And I’ve not yet even touched upon how bad Gloombreaker sounds. I get the distinct feel that this was produced entirely in Mr. Wilson’s favorite freemium software because none of the layers match in the slightest, everything sounds dry and flimsy and is stock, and random effects dot the album left and right.1 Some echo here, some reverb there, a weird electronic sound that keeps looping over “Spell of the Grey Sorcerer.” The timing is off frequently, though it’s hard to tell whether that’s a performance problem or a production problem; likely it’s both. The most amusing gaffe (which doesn’t seem to have made it into the YouTube video) is Mrs. Wilson quietly asking ‘Can we listen to it?’ at the end of “Dog of Doom.” On a better album, I may have thought it a cheeky little 4th wall break, but Gloombreaker never earns the benefit of the doubt.
I’m running out of words, and yet I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface of all the ways this album is one of the most dire I have had the misfortune to encounter. Sure, “Scorched Earth” has some bits that could almost be construed as redeeming, and the final riff of “Gloombreaker” is pretty cool despite the barked inanity of ‘Break. The. Gloom. Gloombreaker!’ But the vast majority of Gloombreaker has all the zeal and inspiration of a brick lying on a suburb sidewalk. And I can’t even properly enjoy giving the music its due, because the Wilsons come across as nice and genuine people passionate about what they do. But as I am reviewing Warpriest, not its constituent components, I can only recommend that you maintain a safe distance from Gloombreaker and leave the Wilsons to their hobby undisturbed.
Rating: 0.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Self-released
Websites: warpriest.bandcamp.com | warpriest.deathisgain.com | facebook.com/warpriestmetal
Releases Worldwide: September 13th, 2024
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