Penance

Yeah, sorry, that wasn't "midweek." But looking at the length of this article, I think the time it took was understandable.

Been chugging along on this one for awhile. These kind of write-ups are usually a pleasure for me. I'm excited to research and review every release by one of these legendary bands. Usually. The following band posed a somewhat less-enjoyable write-up, probably because I'd tried several times over the last year to get one going again, only to discover that the music just wasn't doing anything for me. In retrospect it was probably a mistake to listen to what was clearly their weakest release seven or eight times in the hopes that something would "click," but I was trying to avoid another Count Raven or Solitude Aeternus article, lest this thing appear lazy. That's not to say these guys are bad, just difficult to get into. Even once I finally had enough material to start writing it still took about two three three-and-a-half weeks to pound this thing out.

In any case...

Penance was a doom metal band from Pittsburgh, PA active in the early 90's.  Formed from the remnants of their previous band, Dream Death, Penance primarily played on the slower end of traditional doom. Though distinct from Dream Death, some of Dream Death's last recorded songs eventually became Penance songs, and the hint of Death metal in their style never left completely, particularly with regard to vocal delivery. From Allmusic's Bio:

Doom metal rockers Penance got their start in 1990, when the freshly formed group released their first underground demo. It floated around tape-trading circles until the members of Cathedral finally heard it. They were so impressed that they asked Mike Smail, the only permanent member of the group, to play the drums on their first album. Penance stayed together and put together their debut, The Road Less Traveled, on Cathedral frontman Lee Dorrian's Rise Above Records in 1992. They created a buzz in the metal underworld, leading to a contract with Century Media in 1994. Parallel Corners was released the same year, but the band was plagued by lineup changes and were eventually dropped from the label. Frontman Briant Balich joined in 1997, and the group continued to play live and release demos until signing with Martyr Music Group in 2001. The resulting album, Alpha and Omega, was released in the spring of the following year.

1992 - The Road Less Travelled

Perhaps spoiled by so many other Doom bands in which their debut arguably remains their best (see: Candlemass, Pentagram, Trouble, Pagan Altar, etc.), I was less than impressed with Penance's first release. Rather than emerging with a roar, it meekly crawled out with something like a whimper. Shoddy production and lack of creativity could be overlooked if not for a terribly bland overall tracklist and a vocal delivery I simply can't stand. I hate railing against the vocals when they're "part of the genre" (Death Doom, presumably) or what have you, but even once you manage to settle into that rut of somehow letting the vocals carry themselves through pure testosterone, they never surpass "tolerable."

The diabolic tritone that begins "Eulogy" is itself almost something of a doom cliche at this point, eliminating all doubt from the moment the album begins that these guys cut their teeth on Black Sabbath. Regrettably, it merely serves as an intro for the following track, which does little to meet the expectations set by the intro or raise the tempo. The funeral dirge tempo remains throughout the entire album, combining with a lack of memorable riffs to create what sounds simultaneously tired and tiring. It sounds like a band unsure where they're going, what they want to do, or how they wish to distinguish themselves from Dream Death (the current band's members having all been former members of Dream Death at one time or another). Even the solos, which could have lifted these unimaginative numbers out of monotony, fail to evoke much. Meanwhile, tracks like "A Wayfarer's Tale" simply scream amateur on the lyrical front:  "Ahead lies the monstrosity / Unveiled in glory for me to see / So sad a fate so many should die / But no more deserved for one such as I" --if nothing else about the album, I am willing to grant that it maintains a gloomy atmosphere, be it through the tempo or the vocals; composing verses in elementary rhyming couplets severely undermines that.

A single instrumental gives us a temporary reprieve from Brian Lawrence Goodbread's vocals (aptly titled "If They Would Cut My Throat Out"...if only), while "Misgivings" brings them into as enjoyable a form as I can find, double-tracking and applying a sort of haze around them not unlike Electric Wizard. "Soul Rot" trudges out for way too long, and further makes itself feel longer with a false ending, not unlike Kyuss' Supa Scoopa. Except whereas Scoopa's false ending felt organic as it continued the main riff ad infinitum  while the rest of the instruments slowly dropped out, Soul Rot ends somewhat naturally, only to have the track awkwardly come back after having faded out, then fade out again. I don't get it. After one cringe-worthy vocal performance on "Not What It Seems" we get the final, title track; it's decent enough, although again I don't think we really needed it to be ten minutes.

A bland, forgettable album overall. Hard to recommend to anyone other than that guy who always likes a band's first release the most because it's the most "raw." Their next release was a much more solid traditional doom outing, while later albums cultivate a decent stoner vibe to them. This remains the awkward transition album from their death-doom origins.

http://www.mediafire.com/?747x0avr32ee904

1994 - Parallel Corners

To their credit, Penance came back from a weak first release with a confident-sounding second release that's still not my cup of tea, but getting there. Opener "Words Not Deeds" knows it has to make a good impression and wastes no time pounding out a solid riff and some genuinely energetic solos. The vocals are still not doing the music any favors, but Goodbread's sparse wailing has been mixed behind the guitars such that he can be almost ignored. Album then begins to stumble (often the case when a band throws its best track first), as I found "Born to Suffer" and "Words to Live By" fairly forgettable. The latter turns up the tempo ever-so-slightly to something closer to a stoner groove, and I can certainly appreciate the Jimi Hendrix-esque solo midway through, but the riff failed to grab me. We'll be seeing this sort of track quite a bit on their later outings, so think of it as a taste of things to come.

"Destroyed By One" is an odd one. The opening's whispered vocals, string backings and percussion (triangle? xylophone? I can't tell) give it a nightmarish lullaby quality. If you were expecting an ominous intro to a hard thrasher, however, you'll be either befuddled or disappointed, as the track gives way to more subdued singing and acoustic guitar for the next six minutes. Not a terribly "doomy" track, although I do like Goodbread's attempt at actually singing, however melodramatically. Follow-up "Crosses" yields a pretty good riff and, again, at least tries to keep Goodbread's god-awful singing from creeping too far into the mix.

On the whole we're seeing their gradual shift towards stoner doom and away from the traditional doom. Unfortunately, Penance by this point still haven't quite learned how to abbreviate the experience to better fit in with the stylistic change. The average tracklength here remains 6-7 minutes where it could've been easily cut down to 3-4 and kept most of the punch: "Visions" clocks in at 7:49 without feeling like the extra length really added something. There's a momentary highlight with a pretty nice solo starting around the five minute mark, but the payoff hardly justifies the drag, particularly when even the "solo" starts to drag on past the two minute mark. I'm not saying they should be radio-friendly length--on the contrary, a hallmark of Doom Metal is its relaxed track length. But don't be long merely for the sake of being long; do something with it. "Reflections" is even longer, but once the damn thing gets going around the two-and-a-half minute mark it's quite enjoyable. The trade-off is well worth it because the build-up did not exceed the payload, and once they got their momentum going with an awesome riff, they don't squander it.

For some reason this album often gets picked as their magnum opus. I've never quite understood why, as it didn't completely resolve all of my qualms with the first album, and while the first felt like a transition album from Death/Doom to Traditional Doom, this one feels itself like a transition from Trad. Doom to Stoner Doom. It never seemed to me that they completely found their niche. Unless the experimental edge is what people liked, I found this one inconsistent. Better, certainly, than their first, but still inconsistent.

http://www.mediafire.com/?1y542yl1o4h1lhg

1999 - Proving Ground

Between '94 and '99, Penance went through some lineup changes. Most notably, original vocalist Brian Goodbread left and was replaced by Butch Balich. Balich's voice is a little less abrasive, although he unfortunately sings in largely the same barking style, and I'm still not terribly fond of it. As the album's title indicates, they clearly felt they needed to reassure us that they weren't done yet after several years in the dark. Nonetheless, the band has clearly grown more comfortable with their sound since the last album, even if it's increasingly stoner-based at this point. The opening title track and follow-ups "Cloudless" and "Transcending" have some excellent riffs packed in, and there's less of the self-indulgent meanderings of earlier albums. The next few tracks hit a bit of a dead zone: "Dead Already" and "Better" still grates on me with cringe-worthy vocals. At best they sound like James Hetfield's crooning without his melodic sensibility; at worst they just sound constipated.

If there was any doubt they had drifted from their original death-doom origins, the opening of "Never Lost," sounding like it could have been lifted straight out of ...And the Circus Leaves Town or The Kings of Frog Island. After a laid-back opening, the song resumes their typical doom romp. I almost wish the opening had kept going. Oh well. I had some hope that the lyrics would be getting better as well, because I really did enjoy "Cast in Grey," but then Penance drops something like "Bleed You" on us and I have to read stuff like this. Oh dear:

Sometimes I wanna cut myself
So you'll flow out of my veins
The kiss that tainted my blood
Is beating down my heart again

I want to bleed you from my heart
I want to bleed you from my veins
I want to kill you... in my mind
I want to bleed away the pain

It's like they wanted to write something to placate the tender-and-vulnerable Grunge crowd while still maintaining that Phil Anselmo "I piss nails" masculinity. Usually when I berate Metal singers for lyrics "bordering on self-parody" it's along the lines of King Diamond or Dio's self-absorption into their respective realms of macabre and fantasy. But this one is new for me. I can write it off as a new lyricist still fitting into the band and continue to focus on what they do well, which is the riffs, but come on guys...you're three albums in by this point. Final track "Slipping" is as good a vintage doom track as they ever wrote, keeping the tempo squarely locked in an imperial march with a dark, downtuned riff to boot.

They're definitely getting there. I still have some problems with them, and I'm not sure if they're ever going to fix those vocals or figure out whether they're traditional doom or stoner-doom, but I'm starting to enjoy myself.

http://www.mediafire.com/?d87y4q3jfeuvnln

2001 - Alpha and Omega

Continuing in the same direction as the previous album, Alpha and Omega continues in the same direction as its immediate predecessor, dropping more of the murky "doom" sound for something spacier. Between the last album Penance picked up another guitarist and recruited Mary Bielich on bass. The addition of a second guitar, though moving away from that sacred Sabbath template, frees the band to try a little more interplay between the guitars without the need for excessive overdubs. Further, it gives way to a much more textured sound than anything we've seen before; for the most part I actually really like it. A number like "Love Dies" starts off in typical Penance form, but by the three minute mark we get a brief transition into something quite subdued and, as I said earlier, textured. It's a pity the psychedelic soundscapes don't last, however, as it returns to normal doom shortly thereafter.

That's probably my biggest disappointment with this album:  I'm seeing flashes of brilliance, but fear of committal. After two competent but unremarkable tracks we get "See the Light," which starts to do something interesting around the four-and-a-half mark, but after a fuzzed-out distortion solo and a few more cyclings through the coda riff, it evidently runs out of steam and reverts to the forgettable opening riff. "Reaching" gives their space sound another try, burying the guitars in the mix while bringing the bass to the front and supplementing with periodically tribal drumming. But then they go and screw it up by having a drums-and-vocals-only chorus that seems more suited to a thrasher. Nowhere is this more evident than in "Drowning Me," where an otherwise excellent, contemplative song (Butch actually tries singing!) that resists the urge to break into a power riff nonetheless derails itself by trying to be too emotional, and gives Butch a thirty second window to finish off one verse without any kind of musical accompaniment. I can understand the intent, but their choice of placement smack in the middle of the song really breaks the momentum. Understand that it takes a full 45 seconds for him to get it out; by that point you assume the song must be over, only to have the band then re-emerge for another two minutes.

The only song here I could really find no fault with was "Eden Fall," which just gives us a good riff and sticks to it. No desert space vibes, no feigned profundity, no a capella solo. Just riff, riff, and all the necessary rhythm sections so that you can enjoy the riff. That's doom. That's stoner metal. Whatever arbitrary label you want to slap on it, it's good.  I have incredibly discriminating tastes, but I'm also easily pleased, and sometimes bringing a simple, driving riff to the forefront for five minutes is enough.

http://www.mediafire.com/?hocmxtehiirccml

2003 - Spiritualnatural

Penance's last proper album fully embraces that psychedelic vibe they had been toying with for the last few albums and by and large ceases to be "doom" of any real flavor. We don't get rid of the doom altogether, but now we're primarily just rockin. And that's okay, provided we at least get some consistency.

Opening track 'Gemini' starts us off with a nice Acrimony-style riff-cum-tom-heavy-drum pattern before unleashing double-tracked vocals. Penance usually knows how to break out guns-blazing, and they don't disappoint here. A solid riff at the forefront and vocals that complement it rather than detracting from it make this one a keeper. While a little laid back, it is no less compelling; the guitar tone during the song's solo seems lifted straight out of Black Sabbath's "Snowblind". As much as I've tried to argue they're now "Stoner" at this point, we do see the hints of their old traditional doom sound bleeding through; "Lost my Way" and "All is Vanity" testify to this. Tracks like "The Innocent" are an interesting study in what often feels like an arbitrary distinction between the two genres, as it is a "doom" riff by all accounts, chugging ever-so-forcefully. And yet the rhythm section, particular the upbeat tempo of the drumming, bring the whole vibe of the song up into something we would more readily classify as "stoner". The distinction seems so minor, and yet it's hard to argue against it creating an end-product much closer to Sleep and Kyuss than Candlemass.

Penance always liked to throw the occasional odd-track in there, perhaps satisfying some kind of internal "experimentation" quota. This time we got three, each stranger than the last. Our first taste comes with the acoustic bagpipe accompaniment of "The River Ara", cropping up again with "Iron Curtain Blues" (sounding somewhere between an old Italian folk song and Riverdance) and coming once more as a hidden track at the tail-end of the album, whereupon the band saw fit to record a German-language version of "La Bomba". On their own, they are mere curiosities; but by their powers combined, they are Captain Planet evidence of a band either ever-ambitious or still not entirely comfortable with their sound.

The last batch of tracks continue to try to revive past glory with some old-school doom atmosphere. "Long Suffering" hovers somewhere between Doom and Thrash, with some success, "Lost My Way" keeps it strictly in Pentagram territory (and all the better for it, to be honest), and "All is Vanity" stays much on the same vibe while incorporating a spoken-word interlude while some guy who sounds like Nicholas Cage recites the Lord's Prayer. What either of those have to do with the phrase "All is Vanity," I couldn't tell you (other than that Nicholas Cage is an asshole; but this is neither here nor there). On the particular pressing I have, the title track, Spiritualnatural, is given its own intro track. Given the foreboding build-up of the intro, I was a little disappointed by the song itself, given that it did little to resolve the paranoid or foreboding tensions hinted at by the intro track. Instead, we get a rote traversal through Penance stoner-doom territory. They always say to go into a song "without expectations" if you want to enjoy, but dammit, don't spoil us with an awesome intro if you don't want us to have expectations; you'll only wind up like "Crazy Train" and leave us disappointed.

Complaints aside, this is a pretty solid album. If nothing else, I find it their most consistent, at least as far as "consistent" goes. Judging from the album cover I would have expected full-fledged stoner with a healthy helping of psychedelia, but there's enough Doom proper in here to keep longtime fans engaged, if not happy. This goes back to my earlier critique of the band as a whole, which is that they can never seem to fully commit to one sound or the other, as if afraid of alienating fans, with the result that they instead alienate everyone to some extent. It is a pity, as it prevents them from ever achieving a "classic" album on the level of "Relentless" in their heyday or "Blues for the Red Sun" in their last days. There are good tracks to be had, just not as bountiful or as concentrated as what is necessary to make a certifiable classic.

http://www.mediafire.com/?zrou9gashwqnhxe

Note: the album art above is higher-res than the one packed with the album.

2005 - The Road Revisited

When their first album, "The Road" was originally recorded, it was recorded twice. According to drummer Mike Smail:

We started this at a studio where they guy was a big pothead and sat upstairs smoking pot and left us running the board .........it came out like a good sounding demo, but certainly not an lp............so we went to another studio, (more professional) and tried it again.

The first version of the album was shelved, while the second, better-produced version was on Rise Above Records (owned by Lee Dorian, founder of Cathedral, with whom Mike Smail played on Cathedral's first album). In 2005 the "glorified demo" version of the album was picked up and released as-is by Psychedoomelic Records. I'm guessing it was cleaned up and remastered at some point before release, too, as I refuse to believe a demo from circa 1990 could be this loud.

In essence, we get a "rawer" sounding version of the first album with slightly more enthusiastic performances from the band. The performance contrasts are distinct, but I'll be damned if I'm going to listen to this album again just so I can point out the obvious changes. If you are the sort who really liked the death/hardcore/lo-fi sound of the original album, you may end up liking this version more. Otherwise, all of my complaints about the original still apply here--unless you're a die-hard fan you can probably skip this one.

http://www.mediafire.com/?5rc8p6afgcnd5hl

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BONUS:
1989 - Living Truth (Demo)

The original demo tape recorded by Penance that impressed Lee Dorian enough to sign them. I don't usually put demos on here, but apparently I already uploaded it, so, why not.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ut43r6qunbu0wgl

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That about wraps that up. Thank God. Despite being a band I am not terribly enthralled with, this article is closing in around 3500 words. Let it not be said I half-ass my write-ups!

Don't expect the next one anytime soon. I have six albums to get through and I've heard approximately none of them yet.
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Link Recap:
1989 - Living Truth (Demo)
1992 - The Road Less Traveled
1994 - Parallel Corners
1999 - Proving Ground
2001 - Alpha and Omega
2003 - Spiritualnatural
2005 - The Road Revisited


Next-up: Revelation