Review of Bongripper - "Miserable"
- Geoff Teach
- Jul 8, 2014
- 2 min read
INDEPENDENT INSANITY / LOCAL LUNACY
By: Geoff Teach
Four words sum up the latest three-track, full-length effort from Chicago’s instrumental stoner doom kings, Bongripper: “Endless Descent into Ruin”. Consequently, these four words also constitute the names of the three offerings that make up “Miserable” (The Great Barrier Records), Bongripper’s most recent long-play album. Considering that this is the same band whose first album was one track that lasted one hour and nineteen minutes, it comes as no surprise that they cleverly managed to write three separate-but-equally epic songs whose titles all sequentially form one profound statement. Mostly slow, overtly deliberate, and summarily merciless, “Miserable” is yet another in a long line of distinguished doom metal records from the laconic lunatics that are The Windy City’s Bongripper.
There is truly not a whole hell of a lot that I can say that hasn’t already been said by one critic or another about Bongripper’s intense, feedback-fed sound, but that certainly doesn’t mean that I’m not going to attempt it anyway. “Miserable” is a barrage of stony, psychotropic doom metal, with no shortage of metronomic ride cymbals and snares, insistently cumbrous riffs, and hallucinatory noise. “Endless” is the first offering on the cut, and while its name implies infinity, it is actually the shortest track on the album at just under eighteen minutes. Still, it is fuzzy, furious, and fantastic. Next, “Descent” further delves into the murky abyss, taking it’s listeners on a nineteen minute ride brimming with twists and turns of ebbs and flows. Truly, though, no track on the album is more resplendently gargantuan than “Into Ruin”. Nearly a half hour, “Into Ruin” juxtaposes between dreamscapes of delusion, and nightmarish specters of vagary. At one point, the pace of the song quickens to near black metal-like celerity, and for a moment, you almost wonder if you’ve lost your way and are still listening to Bongripper at all. But not to worry, the bedeviled, familiarly plodding hand of alliterative riffage and rhythm is there to guide you back to reality. All in all, “Miserable” is another monumental classic from Bongripper, and it’s high time you discovered it for yourself. Just be warned: Bongripper is no band to listen to in slices. Be prepared to give them your undivided time and attention, for once their riffs get their hooks into you, they’re nearly (and if I may say, blissfully) inescapable.
To visit Bongripper on the web, click the following links:
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