Church of misery-The second coming

Rise Above, Metal Blade

2012

Originally released in 2004 this was more stoner, psychedelic rock from Japan's Church of misery. You get some straight out groove driven songs like "Candy man" and "Filth bitch boogie" which the band really excels at. Then you get something like "Red river blues" which sounds like early Sabbath being played on a trip to another planet. As you get get some space rock tossed in with the thick, fuzzed out gliding riffs. We get some cover tracks here as well. Those being "One way... or another" by Cactus and "For mad men only" by May Blitz. Church of misery's proto-metal influences are obvious on their originals and that be a large reason why they really do justice on these cover songs. You can tell when a band is covering a song because they enjoy and when they are just going the motions. Church of misery are obviously thrilled to be playing these songs and treat them a such. Compared to the previous album "Master of brutality" this album is similar, but there is definitely more space rock components tossed in. The previous album has so much of a Sabbath influence and this one does too, but you can tell they were listening top Hawkwind and others as well. The results are perhaps even more impressive as this album saw the band branching out a little. I never heard this album the first time around, but am glad it was re-issued so I found out what I had been missing out on.