Album review: Misery Speaks – Disciples of Doom

From Misery Loves Co. to Misery Speaks, European metal runs the gamut of depression from ‘M’ to, er, ‘M’… the latter seem to have missed an A-Z alliterative trick with their album titles though: Catalogue Of Carnage came out last year and Disciples Of Doom shows an admirable trend, but what happened to Apostles Of Annihilation, Behemoths Of Blackness, Betrayers Of Blood or Bloodied Believers? Mind you, it would be fun watching them scratch their heads over trying to use ‘J’, ‘X’ and ‘Z’.

Delightfully, the promo CD for Disciples of Doom is watermarked. I’ve no idea what that means but, unlike Steven Wilson‘s Insurgentes, it is playable on almost any equipment. The watermark, it seems, is more like a numbering system and has nothing to do with the disc itself. The cry on Misery Speaks promo is “please be responsible and do not share the contents of this CD with anyone else!” I wouldn’t share this with my friends. I want to keep them.

The problem being that the music itself is so unremarkable; it might have been nicer to simply guess what it sounded like. The instrumental one minute and 49 second opener “Out Of The Unknown…” says everything Misery Speaks have to say and says it well, steaming along like a back row formation of American footballer’s blitzkrieg-ing the opposition, and in about the same amount of time. Then it’s another 47 odd minutes of pummelling metal before the end of Disciples of Doom, in the shape of “Into The Unknown” (do you see what they did there?), arrives.

Misery Speaks lack variety in their material, which leaves the songs struggling for an individual identity. While the vocal roar is all present and correct it’s the music that lets the side down. Only on the longer songs (“A Road Less Travelled”, “Disciples Of Doom” and “Black Garden”) do the band appear to relax, stretch out and flex their doom-metal muscles. The aural assault decreases and the strength of the return to barrelling drums and squealing guitars is all the more effective.

Like Rage Against The Machine being covered by a heads-down Megadeth, Disciples of Doom sounds curiously old-fashioned and retro. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be though; you’ll have trouble distinguishing this bunch of hopefuls from their many-tentacled underground brethren. They play very well, especially drummer Janosch Rathmer, they just don’t have much song writing nous.

A man can always be wrong but I really don’t get the feeling Misery Speaks will rise to the heights of their late – and lamented – partial namesakes. Misery Loves Co. would have been huge if they had lasted until a fourth album; Misery Speaks will be lucky to record a fourth album.

And they remind me of a band whose name I just cannot bring to mind…