Hello and welcome back to the Bandcamp Buried Treasure article series, where I'll be hunting down Buy It Now/Free Download-payment option albums on Bandcamp by the best bands you've never heard! The goal is to introduce you smaller bands or obscure side-projects you might not have heard of. Anything to expand your musical horizons by just a little bit each week, all while keeping your cost (potentially) down! This week we'll be listening to the Northern Irish black-metal-meets-horror project Patrons of the Rotting Gate!
Usually I'm not a fan of black metal-sounding stuff because I'm averse to the production values and overall sound, but sometimes there are bands that just do it right. Think about bands like Dodecahedron and Anaal Nathrakh; there's a tendency to want to call them black metal in a way, but there's so much going on in the music that it's difficult to classify. Is it truly black metal? Was that a little grindcore I heard? What about that badass groove, where does that fit in? That's where I'm finding myself confused, terrified, and overall loving Patrons of the Rotting Gate. There's a lot going on, but it's a very concentrated sound that purposefully goes where it needs to go, drones where it needs to drone, pretties up when it needs to pretty up, and slams the door to crypt shut behind it when it walks it one last time.
The Rose Coil is difficult to go song by song for a review, because each song flows into he other like a seamless body of work that constantly morphs right before your eyes. Note that the Bandcamp player starts you off at the second track' make sure you're going back to get the full effect of the music. While The Rose Coil is slowly becoming one of my favorite heavier releases out recently, I find myself sticking fairly closely to the end three tracks, which are "A Perfect Suicide," "A Crimson Painting," and "…Of All Eyes." It gives off the vibe of the real, horrifying final moments of a person that absolutely needs to kill themselves in order to be happy. "The Perfect Suicide" is a violent seven-and-a-half minutes of music that's a constant barrage of screaming, speed, groove, technicality, and even ends abruptly; so everything to paint a horrible picture of a long, drawn-out suicide. "A Crimson Painting" is where most artists would call it quits. It's a piano piece that caps the album off… but why stop there? Why not get in "…Of All Eyes"? Why not throw in the mental image of a bloodied up, mangled body dead in front of an easel that's been painted with blood of all eyes? "…Of All Eyes" is a short ambient piece that genuinely scares the crap out of me with headphones on, especially since I made the mistake of listening to the album in full with headphones on early in the morning hours. If it's good enough to make me second guess my surroundings in the dark, then you better believe it's scary as hell.
For coming out of nowhere, The Rose Coil by Patrons of the Rotting Gate is a notable release that deserves whatever press it gets. It's a well-thought out album that mixes a lot of different styles, but stays true to what I assume to be the Patrons of the Gate sound right now, and that's hard to do. Is it ambitious for a debut? Hell yes. Is it worth it? Oh, without a doubt.
