Is there a better climate for Crippled Black Phoenix to thrive? Having spent an existence toiling away in the shadows for the devoted few rather the playing stadiums they would undoubtedly conquer, the band’s end time balladry is simply tailor-made for these times.
Since their prescience with Goodnight Europe from 2007’s A Love of Shared Disasters, Crippled Black Phoenix have spent the ensuing years moving to the beat of their own drum. Sailing the high seas towards impending doom, on Sceaduhelm, there’s an acceptance that we’ve hit rock bottom. Not just politically, but how we communicate with each other. The erosion of human contact, overpowered by the fictitious, superficiality of online culture.
On The Void, led by one of the many voice recordings from the outer sources that have been a constant in the band’s history, it sees Crippled Black Phoenix at their most cutting and visceral. But like they always do, the band weather the storm. While 2020’s Ellengæst felt like tribute to themselves, on Sceaduhelm Crippled Black Phoenix welcome in new singer Justin Storms, who shares duties with mainstay Belinda Kordic and the band’s not-so-secret weapon in Fotocrime’s Ryan Patterson.
Backed by core members, Justin Greaves, Wes Wasley and Lucy Marshall, Storms joins the long line of singers in the CBP broad-church. However, this revolving cast has never blunted the band’s edge. If anything, this approach has made it sharper. On Things Start Falling Apart, Storms leads a new era of post-rock gloom, while the churning slow grind of Colder and Colder makes his mark in the CBP folklore an indelible one.
It all begins with One Man Wall of Death. A song of Floydian inflections with the metallic edge of Deep Purple, as always, Greaves’ meticulously plotted, spacious arrangements add new layers of emotive depth. And these brooding undercurrents remain on the Kordic-led Ravenettes. Drone rock that weeps like an open wound, as she spins a yarn of glitches in the timeline and ghosts of the past that corrode the mind. Thematically it’s galvanised with the equally cutting Hollows End (“How many tomorrows are bound to follow?”)
Crippled Black Phoenix - SceaduhelmPatterson cultivates his own glory throughout, too. The Fotocrime leader’s addition has arguably been the band’s greatest boon, starting with No Epitaph / The Precipice. Two songs rolled into one, the former, underpinned by acoustic wanderings and radiant Melotron that sees the band taking on classic rock with verve and vigour. The latter, simply taking hard-rock to new stratospheres.
And while Vampire Grave sees the band orchestrate something designed for road trips and beautiful freaks (“I could live in a grave / Right next to you”), it’s not the only eyebrow-raising moment on Sceaduhelm. Dropout sees Kordic injecting soul into the staple CBP sorrow to wonderful effect. Her confidence, continuing to grow on the back of her performance on 2022’s Banefyre.
As always, those ominous moments are never far away, and Sceaduhelm’s final three tracks are among Crippled Black Phoenix’s darkest. Once again, Kordic is front and centre on the devastating one-two of Under the Eye and Tired to the Bone. It’s the singer’s defining moments in the band. Songs that offer a sweeping radiance of the apocalyptic balladry the band have always been notorious for. Kordic’s delivery on the latter, brimming with new emotional resonance (“Don’t want you to go / But I’ll understand”).
Perhaps only Patterson could better such moments. Taking the reins on the profound Beautiful Destroyer, Crippled Black Phoenix have always closed emphatically. Here they rival Great Escape’s Great Escape Pt (II), as Patterson guides his bandmates into the heart of war. (“When the fear engulfs us all / Oblivion beckons and calls… No safe place in the fog.”)
It’s the end indicative of all great records, and Sceaduhelm is that. While each of their releases over the years have possessed flashes of greatness, not since The Resurrectionists and Night Raider have Crippled Black Phoenix sounded so cohesively glorious. In these times of need, they simply answer the call, drowning the dread with sweet, defiant noise.
Sceaduhelm is out now via Season Of Mist. Purchase from Bandcamp.
