THE AXIS OF PERDITION - URFE (Cd Review)

01.Grief Of The Unclean I

02.Grief Of The Unclean II

03.Grief Of The Unclean III

04.Grief Of The Unclean IV

05.Grief Of The Unclean V

06.Grief Of The Unclean VI

07.The Great Unwashed I

08.The Great Unwashed II

09.The Great Unwashed III

10.The Great Unwashed IV

11.The Great Unwashed V

12.The Great Unwashed VI

Brooke Johnson (Vocals/Guitar)

Michael Blenkarn (Guitar/Keyboards/Programming)

Ian Fenwick (Bass)

Dan Mullins (Drums)

Leslie Simpson (Narrator)

Fuck this is no ordinary album, not by a mile, its like an audio book beautifully narrated by the actor Leslie Simpson (Dog Soldiers) and tells the story of Urfe a broken man, just one despairing voice among the multitude of lost souls in the doomed nowhere town of Locus Eyrie. Coerced into a quest for answers by an anonymous letter, he is drawn into a waking nightmare where the shadows of his past shape a reality that is rapidly disintegrating around him,sending him into a self-made hell.

The ambient aural sounds sculptured by the band and breathtaking and claustrophobic, truly the soundtrack to hell (if it existed).
'Grief Of The Unclean' is purely ambient and comes in at 45 minutes, though you wont notice that because the sounds and the words just pull you in.

'The Great Unwashed' starts with the line "Life explodes again with a painful wheeze" the description of pain and sickness is worthy of any Clive Barker or Shaun Hutson novel, then we get our first taste of guitars and drums with a slow black metal rhythm and vocals from Brooke.Each piece is broken with more narration and ambient sounds blending with doom laden riffs.

They have broken out of their "Silent Hill" past with such passion and drive that you cannot fault any element of this, sure 'The Ichneumon Method' and 'Deleted Scenes from the Transition Hospital' and absolute masterpieces from the first listen, this because of its "story" nature may take a little time, but this is their third masterpiece without a doubt.

Rating 9/10

For Fans Of : Blut Aus Nord, Wolves In The Throne Room, White Noise, Mortiis

STU