V

Saint Vitus began as a punk-flavoured doom band with Scott Reagers as their front-man. With him, the band released two albums; the self-titled debut album and 'Hallow's Victim'. These albums are very much doom, but with a very punky edge to them, and more importantly; it worked well and these are great albums. When Reagers quit and talked the rest of the gang in hiring The Obsessed's front-man Wino to replace him, guitarist Dave Chandler was a bit sceptic, because Wino, at the time, had a different style from what Vitus had. However, they put aside their differences and crafted perhaps the ultimate doom metal album 'Born Too Late', as well as the very worthy follow-up 'Mournful Cries' (in the latter one, Wino had more freedom to write and even played second/dual-guitar with Chandler).

Those aren't any of the albums we're talking about now. The reason I came with a little history lesson there is because 'V' is a different Wino-era Vitus album. What happened when Wino joined Saint Vitus was that the often fast'ish tempo of the punkier songs of the band were replaced with more dark, atmospheric; more typical doom songs, as were the strange fantasy-lyrics about zombies and magic (that were replaced with more direct personal struggles i.e. drug and alcohol abuse). It was all very Wino-like. But 'V' is sort of a return to the roots for Saint Vitus. Not that Reagers features on this record or anything like that. It's very much Wino, with Dave Chandler's blessing to write and play more, who acts as the band's front man. The music; however, is a bit more similar to the 'Saint Vitus' and 'Hallow's Victim' days (Reagers-era). Faster, punkier, simpler, but still heavy and doomy.

The first two songs are perfect examples of this. "Living Backwards" is short, very simple, but makes a statement for sure. It has the punk-attitude. "I Bleed Black" has become a classic Vitus song. Like the album opener, it's got the same, simple and repetitive main-riff, but the attitude is raw, angry. There are more songs of this calibre on the album. "Ice Monkey", "Angry Man" and "Mind-Food" are all faster and more aggressive songs with the raw attitude; some more heavy/doom-like than punk (see Mind-Food); all enjoyable and somewhat crazy.

This isn't to say that there is no traditional doom music to find here. "Patra (Petra)" and "Jack Frost" could fall under "extreme traditional doom" that is; the type of extremely slow and crushing doom metal played by bands such as Reverend Bizarre and Pilgrim, both who undoubtedly were influenced by Saint Vitus and these two songs in particular. These two songs are almost agonizingly slow, but with a relieving "crazy-bit" in them (the sudden change of pace in "Patra (Petra)" and the psychedelic drone and wah-fucking in "Jack Frost"). Also, the creepy, extremely dark and menacing side of Saint Vitus hasn't disappeared either. At all. Listen to "When Emotions Die"; sung by Dave Chandler. It's a creepy ballad of some sort with Chandler handling the main vocals sounding like a super-depressed drunk guy about to blow his brains out. His drunken slurs are supported by a rather beautiful assumingly female vocals, creating a dark and beautiful song.

'V' represents Saint Vitus looking back to the Reagers-era, but with Wino as their front-man. And it works. It's definitely the most accessible Vitus album for people who aren't in to this music, or at least not used to it. Though the music is somewhat closer to the early Reagers-era, the production is better, so overall the accessibility is higher here than on for example 'Saint Vitus'. It also comes down to what type of vocals you prefer. Reagers sang with a manic, eerie voice. The crazy undead wizard type. Wino is more down to earth, but in his very own little world, because of drugs etc., so while he might sing about purple dragons and psychedelic sunrises, he's definitely human. His husky baritone suits this type of music just as well as Reagers' howls and wails do.