June 2022 Feature Release - The Pit Edition

So just like that we find that a new month is upon us which of course means that we’ll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we’re asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our chosen releases so don’t be shy.

This month's feature release for The Pit is nominated by yours truly. It's 1996's highly regarded fifth album "The Dwelling" from Japan's premier exponents of blackened thrash metal Sabbat. It's been many years since I've revisited this ambitious one-hour single-track affair so I'll be interested to see how well it's aged.

https://metal.academy/releases/3051

Sabbat are one of those bands I've always meant to get round to but never have, so really looking forward to this one.

I'll be really interested to hear people's thoughts on where they see this release sitting as far as genre-tagging & clans go. There's potential for a number of different subgenres & clans so please feel free to contribute your honest thoughts. It'd be great if we can collect a number of well-informed opinions so that we can determine the most accurate outcome.

I can vividly remember my first encounter with Japanese blackened thrash legends Sabbat’s fifth & most ambitious album to the time. I’d been aware of Sabbat through the tape trading scene for some time but can’t say that I’d ever really bought into their largely cult following. They’d created a real buzz around the underground due to their undoubted First Wave of Black Metal street credibility however I can’t say that I was ever comfortable that their package could justify comparisons with the elite exponents of extreme metal at a time when that scene was at its peak. By 1996 though that scene was starting to descend from its position of prominence & perhaps that’s why Sabbat felt the need to throw the rule book out the window & produce something truly remarkable with a single hour-long piece that contains so many disparate ideas that you may find your head spinning after a while.

Sometimes music can be just a bit of simple fun that you don’t have to put too much investment in to & at others it can be a genuinely fascinating piece of art whose aim is to change a person & not just in positive ways. It can attempt to get inside your head & mess with the connections, taking you to weird & wonderful places you never imagined, some of them so foreign & surreal that you feel a level of discomfort. Well, “The Dwelling” certainly falls into the latter category as it’s never happy to sit on its laurels & wants to be everything at once, even though that approach definitely comes at a cost. You see, love it or hate it, to describe this record as blackened thrash is doing it a disservice in my opinion. There’s no question that it’s driven by a strong First Wave of Black Metal pedigree but it’s also incredibly expansive & ambitious, far more than Sabbat were capable of at the time in all honesty. Personally, I hear very little genuine thrash metal here with the majority of the thrashier parts sitting more comfortably under the early black metal banner than the thrash one. There’s definitely a classic heavy metal influence to this record that sees it veering much closer to speed metal with a number of parts reminding me of the blackened version of speed metal we heard on the first Bathory record with a punkier Motorhead/Venom feel to quite a few of the faster riffs & much less of the rhythmic precision & complexity we’ve come to expect from thrash. Then you have the extended lead guitar excursions & the just plain outrageously weird progressive rock experimentation which have been pulled straight out of a 70’s prog rock playbook & these are significant enough to command the progressive metal tag in my opinion. Those long guitar solo sections absolutely reek of Mercyful Fate worship only Sabbat are nowhere near as capable at their craft so they end of coming off as very loose & a little amateurish too at times.

The vocal delivery takes a number of directions. I really enjoy the Quorthon-esque black metal approach that sees the words spat out with evil intent. I can’t say that the high-pitched attempts at King Diamond worship get anywhere the mark they’re aiming for though & they end up becoming pretty annoying. The bass guitar work has some very interesting moments when it decides to run off on its own & tell a different story to the other two band members. Unfortunately though, I find a lot of “The Dwelling” to sound too raw & loose in its execution. That may be fine for your average underground extreme metal release but this one is trying for something far more sophisticated & the band simply aren’t anywhere near capable of pulling it all together. It sounds completely improvised a lot of the time but then you’ll see them go into some extravagant changes as a unit & you realise that it can’t be, at least not entirely. There are timing issues across the board, perhaps not major ones but enough to keep me wondering if they’re about to completely drop the ball & have to start again.

For all its failings, “The Dwelling” is a really interesting release. It’s just not all that enjoyable for me personally as I struggle with many of its quirks. It sounds like a few dudes got really drunk, took a mushroom each, pressed record & jammed away for an hour to see what came of it. I admit that idea does sound kinda cool in theory but the reality sees me failing to connect with a lot of it & wanting more professionalism in the execution. Now if anyone goes into a Sabbat record wanting professionalism then they’re clearly barking up the wrong tree which is why I’ve always found myself at odds with “The Dwelling” because I clearly want it to be something that was never going to be. I suspect that some of our other regulars may not fall into that same trap though which is why I picked it for this month’s feature release as I look forward to hearing some different views on this intriguing & unique example of progressive black/speed metal.

For fans of Nifelheim, Abigail & early Bathory.

3/5