By Andrew Bansal
March 4th 2015, Five Star Bar, Los Angeles CA: San Diego death/doom miscreants Ghoulgotha released their debut full-length album ‘The Deathmass Cloak’ and made a short drive north to play a gig at the ever-welcoming Five Star Bar in downtown Los Angeles, along with fellow purveyors of death and doom, Spectral Voice from Denver, Colorado and some local openers. This was an event put together by Alvin Alemoon of The Elegy Ensemble, and besides his expertise in cat pictures, he also invariably unearths great obscure metal talent through his shows, as was evident from the great turnout he garnered for this show even on a Wednesday night.
At 10:50, Spectral Voice took the stage and put forth a spellbinding set of pure and ominous doom. Not a single person in the audience disliked this band, and rightly so. Their tunes carried an appreciably high level of dynamism through the transitions within them, even though on the surface it was straightforward, ear-crushing, and for the most part, righteously slow. Doom definitely has its threshold when it comes to set lengths, but Spectral Voice made an exceptionally strong impact, and it would not be wrong to say that attendees here would have been completely fine with them playing another half hour or so. But leaving the audience wanting more rather than them waiting for your set to end is perhaps the better situation to find yourself in as a band, and Spectral Voice certainly did that.
Closing the show was Ghoulgotha, with their unorthodox three-piece setup of two guitarists, a drummer and no bassist on stage. Their progressive, dissonant jams were reminiscent of progressive extreme metal stalwarts such as Death, Gojira and Gorguts, and each tune presented a wide variety of tempos and patterns. The three members have all been in several respectable underground metal bands over the years, and since 2012, have been devoting their creative efforts towards Ghoulgotha. They are slated to play shows in this area on a regular basis, and are worth witnessing live.
There has been no such thing as a bad show at the Five Star Bar, and this effort by The Elegy Ensemble was no exception to that trend. A worthwhile exhibition of death/doom from out of town.
Check out full video coverage of the show on Arturo Gallegos’ YouTube channel.