As a kid I travelled through Preston on the way to Heysham to sail to Belfast every year on holiday. I`ve only stayed in the town once after my football team drew at the wonderfully alluring Deepdale stadium and at the inn all the staff were saying you “going to Manchester for a night out”. This may explain the limited charms and the environs that created the delightfully disturbing enigmatic freak show that is Evil Blizzard.
The band release their fifth studio album ‘Death Songs and Lullabies’, where they`ve moved slightly further afield from their early sound of ‘multiple bass psych’, offering elements of dub, krautrock, and goth to provide a much more Post Punk vibe than previous work.
We head into the album via `Off With Their Heads` which is immediately mesmerising both musically and lyrically with lines like “four and twenty blackbirds ready to bake” and “straight to the tower and off with their heads” kind of lifted from the 18th century nursery rhyme `Sing a Song of Sixpence` but shared in a menacing whispered Russell Crowe like accent with a dreamy Killing Joke like melodious underbelly. A tribal drumbeat leads us into the Sabbath meets Hawkwind doom vibed hypnotic `Down Down Down`.
`Black Square` is gentle which is more unnerving, like the calm before the storm and has a kind of philosophical outlook with the line ” what does it mean” running throughout. The title could refer to Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (1915) a seminal masterpiece of abstract art that redefined artistic boundaries by abandoning representation for pure form. But with EB it could be anything!!! There`s guitar riffs that Metallica would kill for and the track runs for over eight minutes but doesn`t feel overly long. Lancashire`s finest throwing a curve ball. Jeff “JJ” Janiak singer with Stoke`s hardcore punk band Discharge adds his reverberating dulcet tones to `Wake The Dead In Bedlam` named after London’s infamous 14th-century asylum for the mentally ill, known for inhumane treatment that made the name synonymous with chaotic, noisy, and dangerous disorder which kind of sums up this offering with its guttural vocals and pounding, thumping clamour.
`Questions // Answers` is another cut that runs over eight minutes and builds steadily allowing the scholarly problem posed to be absorbed over a soothing spellbinding auditory resonance. The seventy seconds that is `Four Letter Words` is a cross between Napalm Death and Motörhead, a sonic headrush.
`Hater Creator` is a doom / stoner leviathan and brought to mind Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction and Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats for some reason. The album concludes with `Warpaint` which in essence alludes to a pigment or paint traditionally used in some societies, especially those of North American Indigenous peoples, to decorate the face and body before battle. Musically it does mirror that pre-emptive time before heading into combat or a conflict that may be lethal. A wonderfully appealing and irresistible listen.
Evil Blizzard for me have their own almost unique recognisable sound which is delightfully hypnotic and almost insatiable once you`ve opened the box. They`re the sort of band that should have signs that read `Danger do not enter` and have that similar intrigue that makes you want to touch the hot plate in a restaurant. Once more Evil Blizzard have created a pièce de résistance or tour de force that should be filed under ‘Uneasy Listening’.
Evil Blizzard`s ‘Death Songs and Lullabies’ is for me a superbly hypnotic listen with just the right amount of underlying menace, bizarre but compelling and a welcome return from Lancashire’s finest.
Rating 9 /10
