“Fat of the Ram”—the pugnacious and swirling fourth track on the new album from fascinating Salt Lake City doom metal band SubRosa—is a folk song. Never mind the weighty guitars that hang like thick shadows or the forceful drums that punch through them. Forget the enraged voices that bellow the lyrics and the slide guitar line that closes tight like a noose, too. Instead, listen to what Rebecca Vernon has to sing: She sets a scene of accepted and quiet suffering, where lakes go septic and unhappiness gets swept under the rug. Dreams are dreamt only in the privacy of homes and otherwise suppressed. The rich lords expect to be left alone, to be given time to “anoint themselves in their finest.” Vernon ends with a glimpse of possible redemption, a Plato’s Cave moment where the narrator intuits life outside of the town’s shadowy desolation. This is the lament of a layperson holding onto the distant promise of hope, a tune not unlike one that Harry Smith might’ve collected.
This isn’t surprising for SubRosa. On 2011’s No Help for the Mighty Ones, the band covered the morose, damned-to-hell Scottish ballad “The House Carpenter”, a song Vernon admits she first heard through Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. But that was just an eerie a cappella interpretation. “Fat of the Ram”, like the rest of More Constant than the Gods, is an exceptionally articulated full-band assault, arranged to give each song and story beneath it maximum impact. Often in doom, the impulse can be to turn up and drown out, treating the song mostly as a reason for amplifier massages. (To wit, see the recent Windhand LP, Soma.) This quintet—two violins, three vocalists, bass, drums and Vernon’s wonderful guitar—are much more meticulous than that, treating each number like its own opera rather than an excuse for an onslaught. Combined with Vernon’s uncommonly keen ear for hooks (however dark-hearted they may be) and the band’s grand sense of dynamics, that approach keeps More Constant than the Gods moving throughout its 68 minutes. It’s too active and involving to become a slog or a bore. Instead, it’s one of the year’s most exhilarating heavy metal records.
The members of SubRosa seem to understand these songs and what Vernon is trying to communicate with them, as if she workshopped the lyrics in front of them. The playing is never too deep or too wide, always moving in service of her meaning. The irritation and insurrection written into “Fat of the Ram”, for instance, shows up in the music, with its start-and-stop lashes of sound directed at the blindly content townsfolk and their scheming leaders. “Everywhere I look/ all I see is famine,” Vernon sings at one point, her voice suddenly downshifting into droll scorn. The music slows into a formless blur behind her, underlining the desperation in her observation. It’s Leadbelly kicked forward several decades. Likewise, “The Usher” opens with a duet above a twinkling bed of noise, Vernon trading lines with the gentle-voiced Jason McFarland as a violin etches curlicues against the din. The band finally lunges forward in unison, affixing their heaviness to a surprisingly forward tempo. This is a love song to the dark and to mortality, so SubRosa afford it a sinister romanticism. Bright violin leads peeking out through the down-tuned glumness, and the feeling is terrifying but warm.
The spirit doesn’t dovetail with the song only in these epics. Each of Constant’s six tracks either ignores or approaches the 10-minute mark, except for the seven-minute “Cosey Mo”, practically making it a radio single. SubRosa lend the tale of immortal grievances and obsessions appropriate drama. The strings are essential here. In the chorus, the violins of Sarah Pendleton and Kim Pack surge behind the guitars and vocals, helping to brand the refrain into memory. During a slinking little midsection, they trace pizzicato patterns around the gathering storm of Vernon’s voice. Finally, as the coda crests, they mirror and then fight against Vernon’s riff, reflecting the unresolved tension of the song’s quest to avenge or at least vindicate a death. Though “Cosey Mo” is the record’s shortest and most immediate song, it’s not the only one capable of planting a hook. “Affliction” turns its imprecation into an indelible if understated chorus. “Ghosts of a Dead Empire”, a send-up of missions for purity and perfection, doesn’t necessarily have a refrain, but its conclusion is memorable and haunting. Vernon’s tune moves evenly with the blown-out riff, matched by harmonies and the emphatic wallop of the rhythm section. It’s a moment of post-metal triumph, with splendor and volume spiraling into one radiant climax.
SubRosa’s first two albums were strong testaments from a doom band with an interesting lineup and manifest interests outside of metal. On More Constant than the Gods, they’ve not only managed to synthesize those enthusiasms but to do so while this strange tangle of musicians works together—unselfishly and with complete subservience to the bigger picture of song, statement, and album. There’s folk storytelling and alt-rock worthy choruses, doom intensity and classical grandeur. It’s hard not to be caught up in the incredible power of SubRosa’s sounds and the wide-screen permanence of their songs.
