Waffle House of 1000 Corpses - End of All Life

 

 

Waffle House of 1000 Corpses - End of All Life
Self-released - 2024
Sludge, Noise, Minimal Doom, Experimental Doom
Rated: ****1/2

The country where I live is famed for its waffles. It makes for a nice visual to imagine walking into your favorite waffle shop-come-tea room and find it fully packed with corpses, enjoying that delicious treat, leaving the digested remains of butter, flour and sugar left to rot on the tiled floor. It's a befitting scene for the aptly named New Jersey combo Waffle House of 1000 Corpses and its cadaverous assault of underground sludge noise and minimal doom.

After having released a debut ep titled 'Good Suffering' in 2023, they're back at the battle front for a sharp and enigmatic slab of sonic torture with debut full length 'End of All Life'. The album cover depicts a half skeleton/half corpse hooked to large chains and being pulled apart from all angles. It's exemplary for the contents of this wondrous beast that roughly consists of two halves, the first of which feels like someone's desperate attempt to escape an imminent death. Hammering sludge noise pretends to guide the protagonist through his struggles, but in fact slyly guides him towards the inevitable with a huge grin on the face. Be it by way of a pounding, almost industrial approach in 'John Hickey's Gun', the slow to mid-tempo dark noise of 'Unconscious' (with its spoken intro sample and roaring finale), or 'Army of Me', the most accessible of the bunch with a steady beat and Helmet-like bassline. The latter tune also acts as a last, convincing argument to lure the main character to 'The Chair' - a weird, growling, abstract, feedback-drenched instrumental interlude that marks the bridge to the second half.

From there on it seems like you're roaming in a transitional world between life and death accompanied by a slow, tuned-down soundtrack of experimental minimal doom with eyes looking at you from all angles, gathering information about whether or not you're qualified and lucky enough to get sucked into the underworld with the bliss of being surrounded by the alienating sounds of 'End of All Life' for all eternity. And when you listen to dark gems like 'The Doorstopper' and 'The Rhodes (Katabasis)', you try to act as scared as possible to be granted access, because this is an impressively idiosyncratic and brutal album that demands to be played over and over again on endless repeat in an appropriate environment.

(Written by Ronny Dijksterhuis)

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