THE GROTESQUERY - The Facts and Terrifying Testament of Mason Hamilton: Tsathoggua Tales (CYCLONE EMPIRE - LP 2012)
It’s not going to be an exaggeration if I say
that “The Facts and Terrifying Testament of Mason Hamilton: Tsathoggua Tales”
was one of the most anticipated albums by me. It’s all due to the awesomeness
of the debut LP, which The Grotesquery unleashed back in 2010, when I honestly
got blown away by “Tales of the Coffin Born” and felt like Kam Lee together
with Rogga Johansson managed to do an album, which I called “King Diamond of
death metal”. “Tales of the Coffin Born” not only contained very good songs,
but also had a story, which impressed and interested me fully. It’s one of
those albums, which when listening to needs also to be read – only then you can
totally understand each song and follow the story and in this case it did truly
feel like reading a horror novel or watching a horror movie. This is why I was
really looking forward to hear and read the story of “The Facts and Terrifying
Testament of Mason Hamilton: Tsathoggua Tales” and this is also why my
expectations were quite high. I got the LP version as soon as possible and
first look at the gatefold cover tells me one thing: The Grotesquery didn’t
change anything if we speak of their ideas for the graphical part of their
albums. The second full length looks pretty much just like the debut, with
every song’s text looking like sort of a page from a diary or another document,
all hand written, what obviously looks very nice and fits the whole concept
perfectly.
If you may remember, “Tales of the Coffin Born”
was a story about certain professor, Ward was his name, who after losing his
child at birth went mad and made some necromantical rites, in order to bring
his son back to life. He succeeded and thus the son was “alive”, but in reality
he was nothing more than a monster, cruel and terrifying, a killer. Ward was mad
and the story gets really creepy since then. The introduction of “The Facts and
Terrifying Testament of Mason Hamilton: Tsathoggua Tales” says that Ward burnt
his house down, but an excavation began in the ruins of his mansion. The
university people, who started to dig there found some horrifying things, like
the maze of torment, lots of corpses, three clay tablets from the Cthonian era
as well as professor Ward’s journal and huge occult library (at the same time
there were no bodies of the Ward family in the tomb). The expedition from
University was then sent to a location on an Icelandic island… Out of 22
people, who were sent, only one survives and his name was Mason Hamilton. He
was found mentally insane and charged guilty of the murder of the 21 people.
This is where the story of “The Facts and Terrifying Testament of Mason
Hamilton: Tsathoggua Tales” begins… the concept of the album is nothing more
than a statement of Hamilton, who’s telling what happened on that island. His
recollections are creepy and hard to believe. Whole concept for the album is
deeply rooted in Cthulhu mythology and describes some weird stories… Toads,
Mushroom People, Gigantic Spiders… And that is only a matter of taste, if you
prefer this story over the one from the debut LP. Personally I liked “Tales of
the Coffin Born” more, it was more creepy and terrifying, but sure, “The Facts
and Terrifying Testament of Mason Hamilton: Tsathoggua Tales” is also fine. I
do admire Kam Lee’s imagination and talent for creating such a killer concept
albums. As I already said, he is King Diamond of death metal to me. And that’s
a compliment!
The concept for “The Facts and Terrifying
Testament of Mason Hamilton: Tsathoggua Tales” is one thing, another is the
music, which obviously I hoped to pick up from where the previous LP ended, but
also extend the musical direction of it. Now, after listening to this album few
times I can say that from one hand I like it a lot, there are plenty of cool
death metal riffs and songs, but from the other hand again I must admit that I
prefer the music from the debut more. Sure, style wise this is pretty much the
same kind of thing – monstrous, epic death metal, but what I loved about “Tales
of the Coffin Born” was how well the album was composed and fitted the lyrics.
All songs had interludes, where Professor Ward was reading some parts of his
diary and the whole atmosphere of the music was just killer, thrilling and
sinister as hell, exactly what I would love to hear from a horror death metal
album. In that case I’m afraid that “The Facts and Terrifying Testament of
Mason Hamilton: Tsathoggua Tales” seems to be like a standard death metal
record, with a collection of better or worse songs. The Grotesquery has lost a
lot of the atmosphere, which is really sad. Of course it would also be stupid
to record an album, which would be exactly the same as the previous one, but I
really expected something more hmm… imaginary, if you know what I mean.
Don’t take all that so negatively though. “The
Facts and Terrifying Testament of Mason Hamilton: Tsathoggua Tales” is still
damn good LP. There are plenty of killer songs there, some of which probably
are the best tunes and riffs, which The Grotesquery has composed so far. As an
example let me bring “The Madness (of Mason Hamilton)” or “Arrival: Tomb of
Toads” for instance – two excellent pieces. If you like your Bolt Thrower kind
of death metal, with sort of marching death metal rhythms, straight forward
riffing and that feeling, which just makes you bang your head, then you’ll
definitely like this album a lot. “The Facts and Terrifying Testament of Mason
Hamilton: Tsathoggua Tales” also brings a lot of more varied songs, some of
which are more melodious or doomy, like “The Cthulhu Prophecy” and “Tsathoggua
– The Black God of N’Kai”. There are plenty of catchy riffs on the album,
hooks, memorable parts and fantastic vocal delivery of Kam Lee (sometimes he
sounds to me like Glen Benton!). Unfortunately the closer to the end, the more
I become… hmm, I don’t wanna say bored, but maybe less impressed and unfocused.
Maybe there are simply too many songs on the album, but when “Dreams of Terrors
in Darkness and Horrors out of the Shadows” begins I almost feel tired of it.
Luckily this feeling is not so intense and basically I rather enjoy the album
more than I just said. Besides, just before that there’s “Psychopompos
Lamentations for a Dying World”, which is just a fast, excellent fucker.
So, I really want to recommend you getting BOTH
The Grotesquery LPs. Treat them differently than the average death metal
albums; read the story, try to capture the essence of it and the music and just
enjoy it. “The Facts and Terrifying Testament of Mason Hamilton: Tsathoggua
Tales” may have slightly disappointed me, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t like
it. it is very good album, probably one of the best, which came out recently,
but my expectations are still very high for both Lee and Johansson.
Standout tracks: “The Madness (of Mason
Hamilton)”, “Arrival: Tomb of Toads”, “Psychopompos Lamentations for a Dying
World”, “Beware They Who Burrow Beneath”
Final rate: 73/100
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