Bands use choir sounds in their music all the time, but on All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood, Rhode Island’s The Body have taken things to the next level and actually teamed up with local choral group Assembly of Light Women’s Choir, who provide a haunting backdrop to the monolithic doom on this new record. The sparse female choral sound is already creepy enough, so when combined with the ultra-low guitar churning and horrific shrieked vocals of The Body’s two main members, the result is quite an intensely disturbing sound. Add to that the various odd songwriting touches The Body throw into their songs, and you’ve got yourself a pretty special album.

It’s hard to pin down a specific genre for what The Body is doing on All The Waters…. The monstrous, downtuned guitar sound and chugging riffage probably puts them closest to the doom / sludge genre, although some of the riffing is so glacially paced as to almost lean more towards drone. A touch of black metal influence can be heard in the anguished shrieked vocals, which lend a singularly manic feel to the music. The real magic of this album lies in The Body’s ability to take all these disparate elements of their sound and meld them into one incredibly twisted, perverted whole.

The opener ‘A Body’ begins with several minutes of drifting, foreboding choral vocals before it collapses into a harrowing section of shrill screaming and rumbling metal chaos. Not quite an intro and not quite a full song, it perfectly sets up the feeling of dread that carries throughout the duration of All The Waters…. Most of the songs are put together very organically, with riffs pouring in and out of one another rather than being structured in any specific way. ‘Song of Sarin, The Brave,’ for instance, thrusts itself into a chaotic mess of distortion and harmonics only to retreat back into silence, spewing back and forth like a dying animal before finally giving way to a full blown onslaught of sludgy musical violence and nonsensical samples.

For me, the real highlight of the album - and possibly one of the coolest and most fucked up songs I’ve heard this year - is the third song ‘Empty Hearth,’ which features a recurring chant in some kind of gibberish language. The chant is gradually augmented with the band’s plunging guitars and some creepy throat singing samples, until eventually the whole mix starts being rhythmically cut out and the song drowns itself out. ‘Empty Hearth’ really encompasses everything that makes this album great - it showcases both The Body’s boldly experimental nature and their ability to mix some fantastically bizarre soundscapes with captivating songwriting. All The Waters of The Earth Turn To Blood is one of this year’s essential releases.

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