PEINE KAPITAL
PEINE KAPITAL "Peine Kapital"
By Dr. Abner Mality
How much evil sludge and screaming feedback can you handle? PEINE KAPITAL from the bucolic reaches of Strasbourg, France are determined to find out. There may actually be a more miserable and hateful example of doomy sludge out there in 2023, but I have yet to hear it. This is a torture test in every sense of the term.
This self-titled piece of filth offers four long tracks that will test your endurance. Opener "Ordure Alpha" opens with nerve-frying feedback and glum narration in French before slamming headlong into a caveman riff drenched in sonic asphalt. The song plods gloomily along as screeching vocals relate incomprehensible tales of woe. These guys heard EYEHATEGOD and decided to do them one better. The trouble with PEINE KAPITAL is, the following three songs are the same thing with miniscule differences. The extra long "Cour Bestiale" and "Demain Charogne" just stretch the length and add more feedback. The riffs are very brutal, no denying that, but they are about as basic as you can get.
I know what these guys are after...lightless doom-noise in the vein of PRIMITIVE MAN. That they achieve, but brother, it's exhausting to listen to. This pushes the envelope for sure.