Album Review: Burn In Heaven – Decalogue by Leather Hearse
Back when I started going to shows in Richmond, it was the early ’90s, and noise rock was the big thing in the local scene. When I was still a teenager, I mainly went to all-ages shows and seeing Avail, Four Walls Falling, Inquisition, and Action Patrol. But I did occasionally catch bands like Breadwinner, Kepone, Butterglove, Mulch, Sliang Laos, HeGoat, Ladyfinger, and Yard Monster; heavier, noisier bands that were popular with the older crowd who went to late shows. I caught a few of them at various points, but a lot of them broke up pretty soon after I started going to shows, and the whole sound had pretty much been gone before the ’90s ended.
But the musicians who played in bands from earlier eras don’t go away. Maybe they have less successful later efforts, or maybe they quit music for 20 years and just go get full-time jobs. But unless they pass on or move to another city, they’re still here in town. And you never know when they might pop back up with a brand new band, long after they’ve passed out of the memory of everyone except the old heads.
Leather Hearse are a brand new band, but most of the prime movers in this ensemble have been involved in Richmond music for decades. Band founder Tannon Penland is best known as the guitarist for late ’00s instrumental math-metal project Loincloth, but he goes all the way back to the pre-Four Walls Falling band Pledge Allegiance, and in the ’90s, he played in Kenmores with former Sordid Doctrine members Dwain Curd and Bryan Bridgman. It was Curd, who passed away in 2002, who gave Leather Hearse their name (which was previously a Kenmores song title) and acts as an ongoing inspiration for the band as a whole.
In Leather Hearse, Penland teams up with vocalist Lloyd Siege of the aforementioned Sliang Laos, underrated heroes of the Richmond noise-rock scene of the early ’90s, whose recorded works are very difficult to come by today but acted as inspiration to the entire city back then. Former Loincloth and Gauchiste member Tomas Phillips contributes electronics, and the lineup on debut release Burn In Heaven: Decalogue is completed by Nuremburg-based drummer Hannes Grossman, who has previously played with Necrophagist and Triptykon, among others. (Technically speaking, bass on the album is credited to “Yevy Tushenko,” but I’m pretty sure this is a “Dale Nixon” situation in the offing.)
For their first album, which was released on Halloween night by legendary metal label Southern Lord, this band rages through nine complex, noisy metal tracks in just under half an hour (a tenth track is exclusive to the vinyl version), laying down a succession of molten-obsidian riffs as Siege howls, screams, and roars. The imagery involved here is far more traditionally metal than classic early-’90s Richmond noise-rock was. Back then we were all a little cringed out by the mainstream association of metal with bands like Mötley Crüe and Poison.* Heaviness was purely about riffs–no one was trying to curl their lip and howl about Satan while wielding an upside-down cross like a weapon (even if we all did still own our childhood copies of Slayer and Mercyful Fate albums). A band name like Leather Hearse would have felt too Sunset Strippy to us back then.
Fortunately, these sorts of assocations no longer carry any lingering stigma, because we would all lose a lot if Leather Hearse weren’t ready, willing, and able to generate maximum metal terror with their dark, heavy tunes. Songs like “Air In Crypt Is Thick,” “Light Cares For None,” and “Bring Us A Villain” generate a feeling of impending doom, as if you’re trapped in a horror novel with no way out and the executioner’s axe hovering just out of sight. “As last light burns,” snarls Siege on “Light Cares For None,” “you pay for what you deserve!” The mood is thick with tension and despair–that same sort of thrilling chill you feel as you watch a truly scary horror film in the dark alone after midnight. It’s scary in the best possible way.
Musically, this is not a death metal or black metal record; if anything, the closest purely metallic comparison I can come up with for Leather Hearse’s sound is Raleigh-based midtempo metal group Confessor–who are best known for their 1991 debut, Condemned, on Earache Records, but have in more recent years shared members with Penland’s previous project, Loincloth. So perhaps the similarity isn’t a coincidence!
That said, I think old Richmond heads will relate Leather Hearse’s midtempo grooves and chugging, pounding riffs more closely to the bands that stalked stages in this town 30 or more years ago. Not just Siege’s former ensemble Sliang Laos, either (though the comparison between the two groups is undeniable). Elements from groups like Ladyfinger, Hose.Got.Cable, and Ipecac make themselves known as well. The swampy Southern elements that appear at times can be traced to Lamb Of God (whose members were playing in projects like Fatty Love and Jettison Charlie back in those days), while the stop-start midtempo mathematics of some of Leather Hearse’s more challenging riffs are reminiscent of challenging 1980s-era Santa Cruz hardcore band Bl’ast (whose material was eventually reissued by Southern Lord).
There aren’t many ostentatious frills on this Leather Hearse album. Occasional ambient electronic swells do enhance the spooky atmosphere, and the subtle complexity of Penland’s rhythmic playing is easy to miss but incredibly impressive once you pay attention. However, this isn’t a band that’s trying to dazzle you. They don’t want to blow your mind with their intricate feats of musical virtuosity. They just wanna bash your brains in with a furious onslaught of heavy pounding metal noise. And they succeed admirably at this feat, creating an album that rewards repeated listens by revealing its musical depths and enrapturing you with its all-encompassing atmosphere. If your problem with typical metal is that it just doesn’t feel quite HEAVY enough, you definitely need to check out Leather Hearse. They’ve got all the heavyosity you need and then some.
Burn In Heaven – Decalogue is currently available on vinyl and digital formats from Leather Hearse’s Bandcamp or Southern Lord Records.
*–To avoid misconceptions, let me state for the record that I like Mötley Crüe and Poison quite a bit, particularly each band’s first two albums. That said, the typical trappings of glam metal made them seem far too silly and cartoonish to feel cool to the punk kids of the early 1990s Richmond underground. Or at least that’s how I remember it.
