Crippled Black Phoenix — Banefyre

Crippled Black Phoenix are a gothic art rock band based in the UK with a truly impressive number of recordings, dating back to 2007. The group has over the years seen contributions from members of many other famous projects, such as Converge and Electric Wizard. I see them often tagged as progressive rock, and while this makes some sense as they have some epic-length songs and ambitious genre-mixing ideas, I wouldn't say there's any technical musicianship to be found here, and it's clear their primary influence is the ethereal pagan post-rock of later Swans, as well as European traditional music, stoner and Viking metal. Their newest album Banefyre is a massive piece of work, a double album of ninety-seven minutes.

 The opening track “Intro/Incantation For The Different” centres around a comically aggressive piece of slam poetry with roughly the same tone as the famous "Fuck society" rant from 'Mr. Robot'. In fact, this monologue seems to reference exactly that, at one point. While some of the central ideology behind the rant makes some sense, it's hard not to laugh at a few of the lines, which could've come right out of your typical 14-year-old atheist's journal, such as "Born with a silver spoon up your ass", or "Steve Jobs... that motherfucker didn't warn us that thinking different could get us killed". Narrator Shane Bugbee's snarky tone doesn't help, either, as he angrily spits these lines with no inkling of their silliness. This made me a little worried for the tone of the album, as these lyrics were overbearingly preachy and blunt, but thankfully the rest of the album is a great deal more abstract. Shane Bugbee never reappears.
 
 Over a driving rhythm of single-chord primitivist riffing and thunderous toms, the female vocalist (Swedish singer Belinda Kordic) leads circular chant-like group vocals in "Wyches And Basterdz" and the following "Ghostland", sounding like a rather filmic take on ancient European folk music. These tracks are rousingly energetic and would make for a great live experience. The chorus of voices behind the lead singer sounds powerful, and the overall sound of the band is impressively massive. In general Kordic is the more impressive of the band's singers.
 
 With the forth track, called "The Reckoning", we have the proper introduction of the male vocalist, Joel Segerstedt, and his strained but earnest tenor. His style is largely derived from traditional 70's hard rock and 80's heavy metal. The lyrical content can be awkward, either overly cryptic or strangely literal and blunt, such as "My whole life, I used to wonder if I exist, but I do, and people are starting to notice, so who's laughing now?". There are occasional moments where a greater charisma and personality pokes through ("Blackout '77"), and I feel he is certainly expressing something honest, though it isn't always elegantly executed.
 
 I begin to be reminded of Mastodon's "Crack the Skye" album. In both cases, classic rock-influenced blues pentatonic ideas are slightly embellished to suit concept-driven fantasy themes. Like "Crack the Skye", this album feels rooted in the classic 70's idea of the concept album, with its grandiose and cryptic imagery, but takes more musically from the bar bands and hard rock styles (Deep Purple, ZZ Top) which typically had far less interest in fantasy subject matter, than it does from the prog bands that actually made concept albums, like Rush or ELP.
 
 Crippled Black Phoenix plays a hypnotic, straight-ahead rhythm more akin to a modern stoner jam band than the rhythmic agility and variety of Rush or Yes. This isn't in itself necessarily a criticism, but the album has a sluggish quality at times; the band is too often stuck in the same lethargic midtempo realm, and seems to dissipate some energy after the chant-along opening pieces. There is a sense that the groove is locked in its pace and cannot, will not change. The climaxes, when they do come, rarely reach high enough for me.
 
 The thirteen-minute "Rose of Jericho" begins as a dead ringer for Dredg's "The Canyon Behind Her" (does anybody remember Dredg?), which isn't bad, as that was a very emotional song with a great sense of finality, but this gets a bit sleepy later in its long running time. The shorter "Bonefire" has some nicely chorused guitar similar to The Cure, and overall the melodicism of the guitar work is the best thing about the album, the skilful sense of progression across the slowly unfolding ideas.
 
 Later in the album, the track "The Scene is a False Prophet", Joel references and modifies classic Simon & Garfunkel lyrics, singing "Hello punk rock my old friend, I've come to talk with you again", sung in a strangely serious effect, for a cringe-inducing moment. I've just about tired of the album's wallowing, maudlin tone at this point.
 
This is clearly a very ambitious piece of work, but seems to lose its direction somewhere across its lengthy runtime, during which the band largely keeps the same lethargic pace. The guitar composition is skilful and expressive, but the group seems to lack the ability to greatly change dynamics or speed and could use some more charismatic vocal work. I know this group has had countless line-up changes and collaborators in the past, and it could simply be that this is one of the less impressive incarnations. I enjoyed moments parts of this album, but certainly can't say it justifies its large time requirements.