Wwwaaaahhhhhhhhhh Beastmaker breaks my heart. The burly doom metal out of Fresno, CA, was briefly euthanized in 2019 to fill the spiritual vessel of Haunt to the brim by both bands' all-father Trevor William Church. Now, while technically revived, for tax reasons (probably), etc... Beastmaker as a band has essentially been hibernating while the aforementioned Haunt gallivants over the moors of the metal scene like a big-haired, bullet-belt-adorned Baskerville. I get why that is. I don't begrudge Haunt's success. Beastmaker had a hell of a run, dropping 10 EPs in 2018 alone, before getting iced in the wake of the
Eye of the Storm EP's gale... but I just prefer their monster-mash, mushroom-headed, ooze-and-booze style of doom to the more epic and thematically dense material that Haunt embodies and exudes. Maybe it's too many late nights as a kid hypnotized by MST3K reruns on the Sci-Fi channel, or all the time as a teenager I spent digging into the schlock horror inspirations of my favorite Misfits songs, but if a band nails the crunchy macabre oeuvre of these imprudent pastimes of mine, then they've earned a loyal fan for me.... 'til death do us part... or maybe longer. So who/what/were(wolf) is Beastmaker? Well, they're a hazy, horror-inspired doom metal, heavily influenced by downer-rockers Black Sabbath and later psychedelic and blues-fueled doom purveyors like Pentagram. As I alluded earlier, they have a surprisingly dense catalog, of which
Inside the Skull is only their second and (at this point) most recent LP, released in 2017 via lauded metal asylum Rise Above Records. The production and mixing on this album are... well, let me put it this way: the master might have been boiled in hog fat before it was sent to the presses, but that only enhances the grimy, grind-house vibe of the record on the whole, and the musicianship is tight and compelling enough to shine through any disputed flaws one may notice with the recordings. Most of the songs have a pulp-horror narrative similar to the macabre vignettes from
Tales from the Crypt, recounting stories of nightmarish eternal life, malevolent black widow lovers, and other things that go bump in the night. If you dare, and are up for a scare, then creep into the trippy psych-drenched "Now Howls the Beast" featuring guest vocalist Johanna Sadonis of Lucifer, as well as the swampy, southern riffs and fat undulating grooves of "Nature of the Damned," the muscular, maudlin riffs and oozing crawl of "Inside the Skull," and the sludgy, venomous grooves and spitting hooks of "Night Bird." Inside of you are two wolves; Beastmaker would like nothing more than to rile them up and set them loose in the dark, gothic theater of your mind.
