Witherscape - The Inheritance
I’ve known Witherscape mastermind Dan Swano for a long time. Twenty-plus years ago we used to tape trade. I’ve got cassettes (Google it, tadpoles!) for which he hand-wrote the track lists. I’m not about to go over Dan’s CV for the uninformed, but suffice to say that Swano has been involved with more amazing bands than possibly anyone else on Earth, and he is without question one of the coolest people in the universe. So it just cracks my black heart in two to say this, but with all due respect (which is immense), despite the absolutely flawless recording/production/mastering, The Inheritance is unlistenable. The combining of Death Metal and I’m going to say ’70s-era lighter-than-hydrogen Prog Rock (I don’t have a good frame of reference for horrible things), is an idea that almost never works. Opeth had some success in employing these kinds of different styles in their music before they went utterly batshit insane. But what style-blending Swano does here just never gels for more than a second or two at a time. The full-on Death Metal bits are fine (although always quickly ruined). It sounds like he’s using the old Bloodbath gear and settings. But this only makes the mellow/weird/goofy Rock stuff sound that much worse. And it’s not even that the music gets as soft as a whisper (sometimes literally). It’s that if you’re going to have such extreme dynamics, the not-heavy parts have to at least be dark. The darker the better! And while Dan’s Death-growls are excellent, as expected, his clean singing (I hate to type this!) often sounds like Trey Parker making fun of someone. There are brief moments when the divergent styles start to kind of work and it seems as if things are going to get good, only to be abruptly devastated by a Moog solo and/or some Butt Rock and/or fifth-dimensional Art/Space Rock vocalizations. I’m sure that Swano loves this album, and he’d better, because I can’t imagine how anyone else could. It seems to me that someone who would like the mellow/Prog majority of this record might be completely turned off when the production becomes heavy and the vocals get raw. And for those seeking brutality or intensity… well, if you only need a couple seconds at a time, you’d be all set. However, any consistency is not to be found here. I listened to this so that you don’t have to, and I have the migraine to prove it. You’re welcome. So, while I could not possibly suggest inflicting this audio-torture upon yourself, I do highly recommend buying The Inheritance anyway and simply never listening to it. Or if you don’t want to take up the shelf/hard drive space, just PayPal Dan $10 and be done with it.
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