As the Body, thunderous drummer Lee Buford and murderous screamer and guitarist Chip King have been lashing at the foundation of doom metal for a decade. They’ve issued a steady stream of splits and collaborations, singles and short-run discs, but their most prominent public moment arrived in 2010 with the masterful All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood. With an all-female choir and sinister samples, the Body applied a seasick sense of motion to truly corrupted misanthropy, with impenetrable distortion piled onto the band’s lurching and jerking spans. In the interim, they’ve paired with post-metal troupe Braveyoung on the stage and in the studio, grown into a trio and occasionally a quartet, pared back to duo form, and moved from Providence, RI, to their current base of Portland, OR. The time spent in flux seems to have only galvanized the Body’s central focus-- that is, to sound completely terrifying, in an Armageddon-with-a-view, end-of-everything manner.
Master, We Perish is the new three-song, 18-minute EP from the Body. It lashes at perceived and much-debated divisions between metal and noise so hard and so fast that its tremendous squall and anthemic structures might actually be the sound of those fortified seams splintering. Master, We Perish not only finds the Body at its most punishing and paralyzing but also at its most diverse, a marvel considering the length. Opener “The Ebb and Flow of Tides in a Sea of Ash” does its monumental damage in less than three minutes, with air raid sirens invoking a tide of guitar static and cymbal smashes that make you consider finding shelter, even if you’re only wearing headphones.
In the song’s back half, King’s six-string upheaval shifts into piercing, sustained tones, while Buford now rumbles through the rest the kit, favoring body blows to eardrum lashes. But the Body somehow embeds a hook into all of this, meaning that you might want to throw up your fists and shout along with King about collapsing structures and forms. Be prepared to be blindsided by a wave of pain, though, like a quarterback being sacked from the back in one of those NFL Films slow-motion frames. It’s every bit as exhilarating and intimidating as you might hope, and shows the Body joining acts like WOLD, Sutekh Hexen, Locrian, and even Sunn O))) in the masterful art of merging blackened noise and damaged metal.
That’s not even the first three minutes. For “The Blessed Lay Down and Writhe in Agony”, the Body bleeds tension, with soprano vocals spiraling over cross-talking samples. A simple, slow riff and an indirect drum patter gather slowly, supporting King’s falsetto screech. The sound of a pump-action shotgun being slid into firing position serves as the valve’s release, opening a torrent of drone and rumble that funnels into a disastrous coda. King, Buford, the samples and, basically the whole world sound as though they’re being swallowed.
The finale, “Worship”, lacks the immediacy of its companion pieces, but its slow rise through martial drums and a scramble of found voices and manipulated notes suggests the Body’s developing ability to bait its audience with control and nuance. They micromanage the implied chaos until there is no more sonic space, no more spare slivers for sound. When the barrier finally breaks, the Body emerges with all of the atavistic doom force that initially made the band so compelling. Here, the sound is caked in static, a great grey noise worn like a badge of courage and a come-at-me middle finger. Feel free to tell these two they don’t belong in your clique, but I’m willing to admit I’m not that brave.
