the psych-doom cometh: Sabbath Assembly

I’ve only been lis­tening to straight-up doom sounds. But hear me out. There’s a lot of gor­geous­ness in doom. Why else would we love the silent napalm opening of Apoc­a­lypse Now? This album, Sab­bath Assembly’s Restored To One (June 2010) is doom melody of the finest order. It’s gor­geous Age Of Aquarius-style choir psy­che­delia, con­trolled and chilling. And the origin story is truly fas­ci­nating: the songs are sourced from the hymnal of the Process Church of the Final Judg­ment. This church was a 1960s cult formed by an enig­matic power couple who, fed up with sci­en­tology and into self-improvement, started their own reli­gion. The reli­gion moved to the Yucatan, sur­vived a hur­ri­cane, and, taking this to be a divine sign, relo­cated to the USA, grew, preached, donned black cloaks, designed mag­a­zines, and recruited celebri­ties. Their teach­ings are based around the wor­ship of three major gods: Jehovah, Satan, and Lucifer, plus Christ as emis­sary to those three great gods. The Pro­ces­sians believe in bal­ance: cre­ation, exe­cu­tion. And this album is nine of their more than sixty orig­inal hymns, lov­ingly reworked by the remark­able vocalist Jex Thoth, whose voice func­tions as a clear 60s throw­back but not at all “retro” on these tracks.
 

Sab­bath Assembly — “Hymn of Consecration”

Each tune on the album seems to ded­i­cate itself to one of the deities; “Hymn of Con­se­cra­tion” is a Satan song. The first time I heard it, I nodded along, and then I real­ized I was nod­ding along to an invo­ca­tion of Satan (“purify me with the fire”). I had a chilling and beau­tiful moment with the Prince of Dark­ness. Can I say that? I’m not ever going to run for public office. But even if I did, and they impeached me, I’d still say this is one of the best of the year 2010 (anno domini). Here is a second, sexy, scary tune called “In the Time of Abaddon” — I like this one a lot because her voice cracks and it is the end of the album and it is thrilling, fright­ening and kind of sub­lime. “Amid the grand dis­order / Amid the great destruc­tion” are the final, unadorned words of the album and it’s a little bit terrifying. 

Sab­bath Assembly — “Time of Abaddon”

I want to be ter­ri­fied. If you tell me you hate this we cannot be friends. You cannot come to my house and look at my copy of the Satanic Bible and we cannot be friends.

[myspace] [Jex Thoth web­site]