SOUNDTRACK: CHAPEL OF DISEASE–“Song of the Gods” (2018).
At the end of every year publications and sites post year end lists. I like to look at them to see if I missed any albums of significance. But my favorite year end list comes from Lars Gottrich at NPR. For the past ten years, Viking’s Choice has posted a list of obscure and often overlooked bands. Gottrich also has one of the broadest tastes of anyone I know (myself included–he likes a lot of genres I don’t).
Since I’m behind on my posts at the beginning of this year, I’m taking this opportunity to highlight the bands that he mentions on this year’s list. I’m only listening to the one song unless I’m inspired to listen to more.
Even though Lars is all over the place with the style of music he loves, he tends to return again and again to metal, especially lately doom metal. It is fitting that Chapel of Disease ends the set. Lars has introduced me to a lot of really heavy music often with growly vocalists. But Chapel of Disease, despite their name does not sound like that exactly. The vocals are deep and kind of growly but they are audible (for the most part) (and sound like they come from miles away).
This song is seven minutes long and opens with an almost middle-eastern sounding quiet guitar intro. After 20 or so seconds, the main riff enters and sounds even more Middle Eastern, but when the bombastic bass and drums come in and the song turns from pretty guitar to heavy metal, that riff becomes a total classic rock song. After 2 and a half minutes, the vocals come in, and honestly they are a little too low and growly for the music. They almost feel like an afterthought for the music they are making. At least the chorus (where that riff comes back) is easy enough to understand.
The guitar solo is actually quite pretty and understated–the whole song kind of pulls back a bit until we hit about 5 minutes when then real metal shows up and the raging solo and double bass drum take the song to a heavier point than they’ve hit thus far. By 6 minutes, in true classic rock fashion it returns to the riff and the chorus and they play us to the end.
Lars calls this “Death-metal Dire Straits” and then immediately says “No, wait, come back!” I don’t really hear the Knopfler guitar but I’ll allow it. I totally agree with him that on their
third album Chapel of Dissease embraces ’70s hard-rock swagger, proggy sorcery and, most surprisingly… fluid melodicism… all atop death-metal growls and chugged riffs. There’s no reason why this should work, and it’s a testament to Chapel of Disease’s heavily worn record collection, as the group now raises fists and beer to the storm.
There’s only 6 songs on the album and none are shorter that 6 minutes. It’s a cool change form typical death metal.
[READ: January 6, 2019] “Train Dreams”
This is an excerpt from a novel, which means that the ending is not as open-ended as it seems.
Xiao Yuan was a teacher but now she mostly took business trips as an administrator. While she is setting up her train’s bunk for the night, a man settles in across from her. He is Dr. Liu and he sells herbal and non-herbal medicines. As they lay down in bunks that faced each other, Xiao Yuan put out a pocket watch, a small digital clock and a radio next to her pillow.
Dr Liu was made restless by her timepieces–he sensed an evil aura from the woman across from him. He got up to switch bunks but Xiao Yuan immediately asked him what he was doing. She said it was 2 in the morning “Do you want to die? You’ll be taken for a criminal and arrested. What a hick…”
She laughed as Dr Liu looked at her and he saw her tuning her radio. It regularly reported the time but each instance stated it was eleven PM. Dr Liu knew he could not sleep so he lay wake until Xiao Liu asked him about his job. She hated Chinese medicine, believing it was mystical and always associated with sex. But she found herself agreeing with a lot of what Dr Liu said.
She then conceded that she was controlling the radio with her thoughts.
When they arrived at the capital, they stayed together at Dr Liu’s sister’s home. They spent much of the next couple of days together but when they parted they were sure they would never see each other again. Whenever she tried to think back to him she was never sure what her true feelings were. She gradually began to realize he belonged to another world.
From then on she loved to travel because it allowed her to relive the atmosphere with Dr Liu.
Later, she met a man and had a physical relationship with him. This boyfriend’s nickname was Flax. He loved her passion in the bed, but whenever he offered to take her somewhere (especially if train travel was involved) she demurred. He thought maybe they should break up but she explained that when she was on a train she felt like a different person. But when she was with him she felt like herself and that made her happy. So that made him happy.
Her next trip on a train (honestly the timeline of this story is a little hard to follow–it talks about her husband, but I’m not sure when she was married to him) she met a blind man. He told her to call him Cricket. He could hear her timepieces but he said that he himself kept perfect time with his heartbeat. He knew the exact time. When she felt his wrist she could feel the small drumbeat in it .
When Cricket left the train, she noticed he had no luggage.
Later in her hotel thinking she was hearing his drumbeat she realized it was a knocking at her door. A man said he as looking for his brother. He’d been missing for five days and he knew his brother was on the train that she had arrived on so he followed her. His brother is blind and no one imagined he would be able to leave his hometown.
Obviously it was Cricket, so she tells him not to worry, that he is a wonderful and she just fell in love with him. The stranger says that she has eased his suffering (!) and he loves her too (!).
In the middle of the night a man’s voice spoke over the radio saying “the time is two ten and twenty seconds.”
What the heck is going on and is it worth finding out? I don’t know.
I Just Read About That... 
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