Having played drums with both Type O Negative and Life Of Agony, Sal Abruscato knows a thing or two about combining the rawest melancholy with insidious riffs and melodies.
Two years on from his band’s acclaimed debut, the gloomy New Yorker is thriving on the opportunity to present his own musical vision and the result is that Lay My Soul To Waste is a much more incisive and coherent beast than its predecessor, with everything that worked first time cranked up a few notches.
Death looms large over every last moment here, of course. Thoughts of murder bless the strident Shallow Grave with wonderfully sinister undertones, the immovable shackles of drug addiction cast a grim shadow over the tellingly Alice In Chains-tinged The Needle In You and the brutal inevitability of old age clings to Growing Old like morning mist to a tombstone.
Such is Abruscato’s conviction that every last moment rings true, the gargantuan riffs and eerie atmospheres simply adding to the sense that this band are raging against the dying of the light with mounting skill and determination. Too unnervingly real to be truly gothic, this is a sincere, soulful journey to the edge of the abyss.
