BENEDICTION — Dark Is the Season (review)

BENEDICTION — Dark Is the Season album cover

EP · 1992 · Death Metal

1.5/5 · 2015-07-20
Vim Fuego

This is an EP of highs and lows. All the right ingredients are present for a good Extended Player- unreleased songs, a cover, and an album track. This means there’s something for both long-time fans and new and curious listeners. The production on the new tracks is a little bit fucked up, perhaps mastered too loud, as there is a constant static hiss behind everything, and gives this EP a slightly amateurish feel. The title song from this EP is one of the heaviest ever recorded, in terms of pure doom-laden (rather than Doom-laden), gut rumbling heaviness. It is one of those songs which causes pot plants to fall off shelves. Based on the disturbing David Lynch film ‘Blue Velvet’, ‘Dark is the Season’ is a journey into a world where violence and erotica are inextricably linked, and sanity and lunacy are often the same thing. It showed off Benediction’s versatility as more than just a straight forward Death Metal band. The cover of Anvil’s ‘Forged in Fire’ features Barney Greenway on guest vocals, re-joining his first full time gig for a quick blast through a forgotten classic. Anvil is one of those bands often mentioned in old school Metal circles, but rarely heard. It is actually hard to tell the song is not a Benediction original, as it reverberates with a grinding despondency.

‘Jumping at Shadows’, originally from the ‘Grand Leveller’ album, includes a statement taken straight from a letter by David Berkowitz, better known as the Son Of Sam. Serial killers don’t think quite like the rest of us, and this is an unpleasant glimpse into a very diseased mind. Experimental Stage’ is a previously unreleased song, and as often happens on EPs like this, it wasn’t quite up to scratch for the album, but is worth releasing anyway. And the lows? Well, this one is like bumping into a turd at a public swimming pool, or finding some bugger’s false teeth at the bottom of your pint. ‘Foetus Noose’ is an anti-abortion song, and it’s a pretty fucking shitty song too. While ideas and ideals should be challenged, Dave Ingram’s preaching goes too far. How can this band, made up of five men, none of whom are in any danger of ever falling pregnant, feel like they can press a point of view on this undoubtedly emotive and controversial issue? None are women, and none will ever be faced with the decision to terminate a pregnancy, which is ultimately up to women themselves. If this sounds like preaching too, then try this superstitious nonsense from the liner notes: “This is a kind of anti-abortion song. Have you ever wondered what happens to an aborted foetus? Well it gets cast into its own Hell to await death by hanging at the end of all creation. The Hangman’s noose is made from all the weaved umbilicus from the unwanted children.” The world is flat, the moon is made of green cheese, and Benediction would have been better off without that idiot Dave Ingram.