Shrinebuilder – Shrinebuilder

This unholy coming together was rumoured for nearly three years on various forums and metal sites: the union as Shrinebuilder of four hugely influential scene overlords - Scott ‘Wino’ Wienrich (The Obsessed, St. Vitus amongst about nine others), Al Cisneros (Sleep, OM), Scott Kelly (Neurosis) and Dale Crover of the mighty Melvins - into an riff heavy 8-legged metal behemoth. Well, now the product of the union is among us, and hype aside it now has to live on its merits. Which it does.‘Solar Benediction’, the album’s opening track, drops you right into the heart of the band’s sound ”“ tight and sharp, buzzing with pyramid-size guitars; Crover and Cisneros underpinning everything with a magma-deep poise. It alternates between a Kelly/Wienrich twin-guitar line and a massive dirty piledriving riff. The track descends into an agonizingly slow central section, before returning via an Isis-like section to a monumental reprise of its opening riff.What’s obvious straight away is that this isn’t a hastily put together vanity project. It’s been crafted and structured. What’s also immediately obvious is how classic it sounds ”“ it doesn’t have that post-metal sheen or crunch, instead it sounds earthen and old, almost as if the band have side-stepped the last 16 years and stepped straight out of the back of Wienrich’s fusty tour van.As the record progresses it also becomes clear just how perfect a blending of the four protagonists styles this is. It has that old man of the sea vastness that Wienrich has been plying for years, his gruff voice and slow, crawling riffs; it sinks Scott Kelly’s huge guitars into the earth, maintaining that Neurosis sludge but returning them to the Iommi well-head, his throaty vocals working well against Wienrich’s at times desperate wail; Al Cisneros sounds, at times (especially at the beginning of ‘Blind for All to See’ and at the end of ‘The Architect’), like his old Sleep self ”“ that light-fingered churning depth. As for Dale Crover, despite the walled-in tightness of his drumming, you might say the one thing the record lacks from this union is some of the Melvins’ rotten quagmire ”“ something outside of the traditional doom metal framework.Ultimately though, the record lives or dies in the way the four musicians blend their styles ”“ it doesn’t perform any miracles, it just knows exactly where it’s going and well, how to get there. Lyrically, it’s pure hokum (‘the reckoning was to bring the future ghosts to see’ for instance) but so what. This year needed more hokey lyrics and huge riffs. Help is at hand”¦

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