If ever there were an optimal time for Virginia doom acts Cough and Windhand to release their best music to date, this moment seems like the right one. During the last few years, both Richmond bands have fostered a buzz that’s escalated steadily enough to mirror the electric crawls of their music. Ritual Abuse, Cough’s second album and first for relative metal major Relapse, evidenced the group’s ability to punish over the long haul, or to keep 12-minute marches interesting with deliberate lulls and requisite quakes. A year ago, Windhand emerged with a self-titled five-song debut that managed to be simultaneously spooky and psychedelic, with tremors of backwoods horror reverberating within the band’s riff-and-rhythm lockstep. It also introduced Dorthia Cottrell, a singer who slipped a fetching dose of soul into the band’s tidal sway. “Heaven”, she beckoned through repetition at the close of the record’s best song, “is on its way.” You wanted to stick around to see just what that meant for Windhand.
Later this year, Relapse will issue new LPs from both bands, something they’re teasing with the new, three-track split album Reflection of the Negative. The contributions from both bands are, so far, inarguable career highlights, cuts so well imagined and executed that you’ll, once again, want to know what’s next for both. The move is a marketing coup for Relapse, of course, but Reflection of the Negative is also one of the most immersive metal sets to arrive so far this year. If this is only a prelude, the main event will be aptly named.
As Craig Hayes pointed out at Popmatters last year, splits between heavy metal bands are a matter of convenience not only because they allow acts to share costs and fans but also because they serve as de facto display cases for subtle subgenre variations. Heavy metal is a realm of both establishing and erasing rules, meaning that a niche is pure only until someone new can come along and rearrange its ideals. That’s especially true here, with two acts from the same town and typically pinned with the same genre tags-- sludge, doom, stoner, psychedelic-- going in wildly different directions.
As they did in 2010, Cough uses the split LP format to go the distance with one uninterrupted track. These 18 minutes are a showcase of pacing and structure. Cough rides the same theme for the distance, and they don’t suddenly sprint after distended stretches, an easy and pervasive technique in such situations; instead, the quintet methodically adds and removes elements like a creaking organ, spliced movie samples, and shrieking second guitar to maintain intrigue without seeming impatient. Vocalist Parker Chandler initially crawls inside of the amplifier wall, his shrieks made mostly unintelligible by the band’s creeping tumult. Near the halfway mark, though, the drums briefly disappear, leaving only the scrambled guitars and his now settled desperation: “The time has come for sacrifice,” he repeats. The ingenious setup keeps the track interesting by revealing the layers slowly and in an unexpected order. Nearly a decade into their career, Cough has never sounded so belligerent, frightening or immediate.
On its side, Windhand opt for two numbers, both of which find the band ratcheting its intensity and urgency. The shorter “Amaranth” deals in italicized aggression, turning everything from Cottrell’s arching vocals to the sprawling guitar solo that consumes the song’s back half into a point that must be made now. Though it’s slower than its counterpart, “Shepherd’s Crook” capitalizes on the same feeling. Every piece comes with a little extra energy, whether it’s the irascible noise-guitar introduction or the fortified punch that the drums pack in the otherwise torpid verses. On their debut, Windhand, especially Cottrell, sometimes seemed as if they were hanging around for an audience to arrive, dipping into a groove long enough to give a crowd the chance to show. But with Reflection of the Negative, they’re coming at the audience from all angles. They’re done waiting, and they’re much better for the shift.
Reflection of the Negative also serves as an important notice for the Virginia capital of Richmond. When people talk about metal in the South, they’re quick to trot out the humid burgs of Savannah and New Orleans or, in a much different way, the death metal crucible of Florida. But Richmond has a historic and lively past with loud music, whether talking Honor Role and Breadwinner, Pig Destroyer and Municipal Waste, or even GWAR and Avail. Between Inter Arma’s Sky Burial, a study in metal miscegenation, and Reflection of the Negative, the city’s already responsible for two of the year’s most compelling metal albums. Release dates for full-lengths from Windhand and Cough haven’t even been announced yet. The time is right.
