VHÖL
by Grayson Currin
This West Coast metal quartet features members of Yob, Ludicra, and Hammers of Misfortune. Their self-titled debut is a wonderfully weird intersection of black metal and hardcore impulse and attitude, laced with prog, thrash, and gloriously old-school rock'n'roll.
The end of "Set to Await Forever" hangs like an unexpected ellipsis: During the first 45 minutes of VHÖL-- the self-titled debut from four West Coast metal veterans so well-regarded that many are calling this a supergroup-- there's very little space, pause or relief. The album's blackened hardcore is generally restless and relentless; VHÖL colors the smallest of spaces with extra guitar lines and orotund bass parts, giving the italicized shriek a sense of unordinary saturation. But five minutes into "Set", the record's finale, the quartet slows suddenly, tempering their once-irascible sound into an atmospheric haze. The guitar and bass drift toward eternity, while the drums lazily march ahead toward anything, a kid kicking a stone down the street at sunset.
Initially, that slow fade from sustained bustle might have been an apt metaphor for VHÖL itself, a band originally assembled to record only one album. For more than a decade, guitarist John Cobbett and drummer Aesop Dekker played together in Ludicra, an intricate black metal quintet that announced their end in 2011. But Dekker and Cobbett wanted to make one more album together, so they recruited a pair of incredible equals-- Yob vocalist and guitarist Mike Scheidt, who only sings here, and Cobbett's Hammers of Misfortune multi-instrumental bandmate Sigrid Sheie, VHÖL's bassist. But when the four entered the studio late last year, they had enough fun and found enough chemistry that, as Dekker admitted earlier this month, they've already started writing new material.
That connection feels so obvious on VHÖL, a wonderfully weird intersection of black metal and hardcore impulse and attitude, evocatively laced with bits of prog, thrash and gloriously old-school rock 'n'roll. These songs put immediacy and intrigue shoulder to shoulder, so that genuinely oddball arrangements bolster songs that make you want to join the melee. You'll likely remember the hangman riff of "Plastic Shaman" and its barked invocation-- "The wage of sin is death," snaps Scheidt from his bully pulpit-- the first time you'll hear it. But this isn't some simplistic maul; VHÖL reconfigures time and expectation, shifting the tempo and tone so much that the song feels like a rollercoaster inspired by a rodeo. The great "Arising" first rumbles like Motörhead down the straightaway, an approach that likely won't prepare you for the hyperkinetic, 90-second guitar solo that Cobbett takes during the song's back half. Against most odds, the parts coalesce, and that's how it works with VHÖL: Together or separately, these four musicians have been at it long enough to be discontent or uninterested in playing anything too straight, but they've also been at it long enough to know that it's possible to embed strange tendencies within a framework that still sports a visceral magnetism. VHÖL hits on first listen; it captivates on the fifth.
That VHÖL is already at work on new material is good news for these players, because they sound not only reinvigorated in this setting but also somewhat emancipated. Cobbett and Dekker will long be linked with their work in Ludicra, and there are traces of that here, for sure. But VHÖL is a spotlight of their versatility that finds them not only comfortable but also rather exhilarated by such an open-ended platform. By limiting her role to bass alone, Sheie, perhaps known best as a keyboardist, delivers her lines with focus and force. She overruns the rhythm and steps out for sidewinding variations, injecting a position sometimes thought to be a bit big and dumb with a jazz enthusiast's musicality.
Most of all, though, it's Scheidt that's the wonder here. He puts down the guitar and pushes away the typecast set by his work in Yob to treat these songs like very few vocalists could. He's a chameleon, not only able to move quickly between hardcore berating and classic metal hook-setting but also capable of blending the two. "Insane with Faith", for instance, is a bug-eyed roar, with the band racing headlong into a circle pit; from the tone of his voice, you expect Scheidt to be in the thick of it, barking while crowdsurfing, doing his best to pull the microphone cord along for the adventure. On the other side of Scheidt's ostensible range, he delivers long arches of falsetto as the slow exit of "Set to Await Forever" approaches. He's like a hirsute, heavy-metal soul singer, staring out at a mix of lit lighters and thrown horns. But some of the most intriguing moments on VHÖL come when he's able to do both. During the chorus of "Insane with Faith", he crests into a low-level cry, suggesting Iron Maiden reborn in a small rock club. During "The Wall", his serrated bark comes backed real-time by his more operatic air. That's the kind of multiplicity upon which VHOL depends, a quality that makes them less of a supergroup and more of a generative force with an unpredictable will of their own.