Proceed

Orthodox have annoyed me for a very long period of time, which seems unfair when you learn that new release Proceed is the first album of theirs I’ve listened to. Why? Because Unorthodox, the US band, kind of also play doom metal with some experimental features and their name makes more sense when you consider a pair of equally skewed sounds, even if they are as far apart as 2 doom metal groups can get. Cue a decade of me looking for one band and finding the other because I forgot the difference in names. Orthodox, now that I’ve been properly introduced to the Spanish trio, sound about as unexpected as their oppositely-named brothers, and I guess that dressing up as Sevillian monks onstage might lend some added meaning to their moniker. On the basis of Proceed, these guys have a penchant for ugly, offbeat doom like Oxbow, but also turn in some more normative material not a million miles from Lurk. However, I’d also want to listen to more albums before declaring that as a general rule, since I get the impression they shift around plenty in style.

This eighth full-length in a near 20 year history exhibits both the limitations and the range of a three-piece set-up. At moments, the triumvirate of instruments splits neatly into separate responsibilities and tonal areas, so that different things seem to be happening in different parts of my head when listening on headphones; this is especially clear in the tense opening to 'The Son, the Sword, the Bread', where bass creaks and rattles around like an old ship in a night storm, guitar jangling like the lanterns and hooks in the rigging, and drums stamping out an uneven lurch as of a recently awakened groggy sailor staggering across deck to see what the fuss is about. If that sounds too abstract, let me be more blunt: Orthodox play a lot of odd time signatures in that song, nor are they afraid of them elsewhere, 'Abendrot' in particular slowing right to a rhythmic doomy crunch that frequently reaches silence between drum strikes. Reverse the roles, however, and you get 'Past Seers', a building droney track with more than a little Black Sabbath or Sleep jamming quality to its steady progress and distorted stoner vocals.

I suppose that’s why Orthodox get to be called experimental, because how can a band at once sound like freaks such as Oxbow and also the whole generic post-Sleep stoner doom scene? In the main, the looseness of the structures - both in whole songs and in each musical bar - sees the Spaniards drifting from one to the other within very short spaces, even doing weirder stuff like beginning 'Starve' with the same chords as Burzum’s 'Key to the Gate' and later dropping what sounds a bit like a Winter riff, if Winter were into 13/8 time or whatever Orthodox have slipped into (I am not a time signature guy). Despite being made of similar pieces, each of the 6 tracks feel fairly different, and a few of them never particularly settle down into any consistent rhythm, just fluidly move from place to place, causing as much seasickness as my analogy in the last paragraph. So consider this your official warning: if you have dandruff, eat some sticky snacks the first time you listen to Proceed, otherwise you’ll be covered in snowflakes by the end of the album. It’s a headscratcher alright.

These kind of albums come with very definite pros and cons: on the one hand, the creative way of writing and playing leaves plenty to pay attention to on every listen, while a few moments seem instrumentally very skilful, for instance the bass solo in 'Past Seers'; on the contrary, I’m not able to call Proceed anything positive by regular standards, like hooky, fun, satisfying - it’s not always that atmospheric either. I think some of the difficulty of this album comes from it requiring a lot of attention to process, since it morphs at quite a rate despite being mostly slow, absolutely refusing to build up grooves or let the vocals create signposts for song direction. Perhaps sometime in the future, Orthodox will start making more sense to me, but my judgement of this 42 minute mindwarp is that the band stand further away from “normal” than I’m willing to travel.


Originally written for The Metal Observer - http://www.metal-observer.com/3.o/review/orthodox-proceed/