A Pale Horse
Named Death
“Lay My Soul To
Waste”
WWWW
If
by chance you’ve been missing that foreboding, decidedly goth, metal moodscape
that was Type O Negative since frontman Peter Steele’s 2010 death, you’re in
for a treat. Two ex-Type O members are not only carrying on Steele’s sonic
legacy (although not quite intentionally) and creating new, dark clouds of
grime in A Pale Horse Named Death. The band’s second album, “Lay My Soul to
Waste,” is heavy, ambient, and laced with drudgery that would fit Steele’s
bleak outlook to a tee.
Led
by vocalist/guitarist Sal Abruscato, who played drums for Type O Negative up
until, and including that band’s 1993 breakthrough, “Bloody Kisses,” A Pale
Horse Named Death is not quite as outwardly satirical with the heavy-handed, morose
humor as Type O, but still manages a delicate evil. Abruscato favors heavier sludge-like
guitar riffs and Layne Stayley-esque, eerie vocal harmonies and tempers, just a
bit, the ghoulish world-loathing that defined Steele. Tracks like “Shallow Grave”
are light-impenetrable, with heavy guitar/bass sync; Abruscato’s beautifully
dark voice falling somewhere between Nick Cave and Saigon Kick’s Matt Kramer as
he relinquishes, “I buried you in the back of my mind, and I let the worms eat
you.”
“Growing
Old” begins with haunting pipe organ flourishes, before slamming into a Jerry
Cantrell-approved, hundred-pound string bend – drummer Johnny Kelly, also a
Type O alum, pounds out the song’s frustration at deluded life expectations
like he’ll never come to terms. Tracks like “Needle In You” delve into equally
unrequited hope over a bed of de-tuned, NYC hardcore riffage and dirge-like
pace; Abruscato twisting the hooks with “I am the poison in you.”
Somberly
heavy, draw-the-curtains metal at its best, A Pale Horse Named Death is the
antithesis of the pop façade defining contemporary music for the masses in
2013. Their music invites listeners to the dark side, to lick the wounds life’s
inflicted.
-Mark
Uricheck
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