Bloody Fuckin’ Panda Summon Me Some DOOM

Bloody Panda / Summon (Profound Lore, 2009)

Bloody Panda is a band that has been ripping shit up for about a minute, so not too many people know about them. Rolling out of a secret New York underground sarcophagus constructed by the shadow government financed and founded by the Rockefellers in 1930, Bloody Panda’s droning funeral doom is as black as midnight on a moonless night. Their second full-length album Summon is out now on Profound Lore, so you should go buy it.  Buy a copy for your friends, too.  It doesn’t matter if they don’t like metal.

These are crushing death rattles from the caved-in chest of a goliath.  In desperation, blackened wings sprouting from the back of the shunned god, the straying feathers raining down plague and pestilence on man.  These grim waltzes drag unrelenting tension like ten tons of rock being hauled by a lone man with a rope tied to his waist.  Much like the 1980s New York electric death marchers Swans that precede them, Bloody Panda excels at crafting harrowing walls of low-end guitar destruction and evangelistic doomsaying.  The intensity never wavers even on songs like the 21-minute “Miserere,” where the unconventional, possessed howls and shrieks from Yoshiko Ohara claw their way through macabre keyboards and foundation-shaking guitar chords.

Summon builds upon Bloody Panda’s debut Pheromone, taking their ferocious-yet-somber doom expressions to even greater heights. The doom genre may be an increasingly crowded place these days, but Bloody Panda is in a tier of their own.  Highly recommended.

MP3: “Miserere” (9-minute excerpt)

Buy it @ Profound Lore

~ by theoberlander on September 23, 2009.