Womb / Disciples of Mockery

This is a split where you can feel the might of Craig Pillard, one of the most influential entities in death metal. The two bands on the split are both his brain children, and he is the first vocalist of Incantation, with whom he plays live gigs with again. He always plays doom and doom inspired death metal, and he does it really well. The WOMB side of this split is straight up doom, with pornographic lyrics, when there are lyrics at all. The second song, ‘Thong’, is an instrumental track and consists of 2 riffs that are played for like 4 minutes, roughly. The rest of the songs include lyrics, although at least half of the songs are just the titles. The music is incredibly slow, reminding one of Thergothon and Winter, but minus the death metal. The only death metal parts are Craig’s vocals, which sound roughly like the Incantation early stuff. The sound is thick and heavy and melancholic, the guitars have a bit of reverb and the bass is nice and fuzzy and sticks out from under the layered sounding guitar work. The drums are handled by an other ex-Incantation member, Jim Roe, and are fairly slow and primitive, but he makes his slow ass beats interesting by putting the snare in different places, putting in rolls and cool little trills and fills to make up for the lack of tempo. All in all their side of the record is awesome. The other side is your typical Incantation inspired doomish death metal barrage with constant double bass, lots of double time, blast beats, the whole nine yards. Disciples Of Mockery never fail to impress, and on this recording they sound a little bit more like a demo then on their full length, which is obvious and to be expected seeing that it is in fact a split demo. They play tracks that can also be found on their album, so not that much interesting, but the songs are played well, and the sound is a little bit different. The low ends are more muffled except of course on the vocals, and the kick drum stands out a lot more than on their full length. If you own the full length, just get it for the WOMB side of the recording, if you do not and like Incantation, buy this. If you like doom but do not like death metal so much, you will still like the WOMB side of it, if you like death metal, then the D.O.M side will not fail to impress. Over all this is an album that everyone can sink their teeth into.

Here's an interesting split. What we have here is two bands that feature 3 ex-Incantation members, being Ronnie Deo, Jim Roe and of course Craig Pillard. With that being said, one can almost know what to expect from this split release.

The album starts off with the Womb side. Womb was a project formed after these 3 members left Incantation, and continues in somewhat of the same fashion but with out the John McEntee riffs. What we do have here is really doom laden death metal that fans old and new can appreciate. The womb side is actually their one and only demo, and it's a shame they never released more material.

Womb is quite destructive but has a lot of open, evil sounding doom sections. Craig Pillards voice thunders overtop of the crushing music. The second track, "Thong" displays some of the best doom sections on the album, and really shows how well these guys can play together. Actually, some of these doom sections wouldn't feel out of place on a Methadrone album, a later doom project of Craig Pillard. The lyrics are destructive as they deal with degrading women, and the likes.

The next half of the split belongs to Disciples of Mockery, which features the same members except with a different vocalist. The transition to this side is not very noticeable unless you play close attention, as both bands sound quite similar and have the same overall vision. DoM is however, leans towards the more violent side of things in terms of music, once again comparable to Incantation's violent parts, especially the second Incantation LP.

One thing I noticed from the DoM side is there are some pretty black metal sounding riffs, where a chord is played and a shifting melody is hidden within it. These three songs are from the first DoM promo, and are a bit more primitive than the DoM full length. However, although some people feel this side isn't near as good as the Dom LP, I feel they are still strong songs and flow very well with the split.

This split is highly recommended, especially to Incantation fans, fans of Craig Pillard, and fans of doom/death metal. There is some truly well done song writing here, and it's a shame both bands (especially Womb) didn't release more material.