Shrinebuilder is a metal supergroup comprised of members of Om, Neurosis, The Melvins, The Hidden Hand and Sleep. (!) ((!!!!)) Recorded in just 3 days, their debut album has it all - psychedelic riffing, ominous chanting, and some serious fuzzed-out bliss (The long vamp in the second half of opener "Solar Benedicition" is a big highlight). Highly recommended - this album is sure to please fans of any of the member's former projects.
There are moments [as they are and as we configure them] strung together amidst all of our other moments of slow growing awareness, when the tectonic shifting of who we think we are gets overcome and overwhelmed by who we really are. And IF we are lucky, it happens without too much bloodshed.
It births, it dies, it lives without bloodshed for the rare and sainted few.
For the rest of us it happens to us [and not for us]. And it is accompanied by a quickening purpose and transcendent understanding of our goddamned place in space: we build our places of worship up on high for a reason, and SHRINEBUILDER -- created by Al Cisneros, Scott "Wino" Weinrich, Dale Crover and Scott Kelly - shares the season and the reason: because it is closer to the gods.
So it was that the calling was answered as simply as a phone call could have been and was made. Cisneros called Weinrich, Kelly, and later Crover and decided, in full-blown ex nihilo fashion to make some music beyond the summed parts of all what had been done before and in doing so rediscover why it had been done in the first place. Beyond the parts, beyond beyond, and here descriptors that you will read every OTHER place but that go without saying here...crushing, killing and heavy, heavy, heavy...seem somehow too much and not enough.
It is Wagnerian. It is Iommic. It is simply: SHRINEBUILDER.
Now Manson [Charles, not Marilyn] once said to us, "there are only two ways to get to the cross...you get dragged...or you go along."
And here, in the spirit of the contrary, is a third: SHRINEBUILDER.
You're goddamned right.
----Eugene S. Robinson
