Dragged Into Sunlight – Widowmaker
Review by Rich Price
Dragged into Sunlight’s brand of misanthropy spreads forth from Liverpool like some dark disease, utterly terrifying and yet dangerously infectious. Widowmaker is Dragged into Sunlight’s first full release since 2009’s incredible Hatred for mankind: Although the band are keen to point out it isn’t a direct successor.
Indeed It’s difficult to relate Widowmaker with the raging slab of misanthropy that was Hatred for Mankind. It’s difficult because as soul destroying and intense as HFM was, Widowmaker just towers above it. It’s utterly mesmerising, captivating and like nothing else I remember hearing, a master class in suspense, tension that would have Hitchcock applauding and asking them how they managed to do that.
If Satan himself made music, he’d struggle to create something as truly terrifying as Widowmaker. It really isn’t for the faint hearted, I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t come with the health warning ‘may cause death and eternal demonic torture’.
Part one starts slow, with clean and minimal guitar work and is dripping atmosphere courtesy of some incredible production from Tom Dring, and it takes its time, nearly 15 minutes in fact, to build. It lulls you into a false sense of security, enticing you like some sort of horror movie victim unaware of just what carnage is waiting later on.
The build of tempo and minimal guitar coupled with their trademark samples, are just enough to make your body react as though you’re actually in real danger, the effect creates such a strong sense of emotion it’s impossible not to be swept along.
By the 11 minute mark you start to feel everything changing, your heart is starting to race and there’s a huge feeling of dread, yet you can’t stop listening. Your fingers will be hovering over the stop button, just in case….
It’s like being a child and watching that horror film you know you’re way too young for, and keeping tight hold of the remote just in case the scary monsters turn out to be real. It’s quite breathtaking the level of dread and terror that DiS manage to bring to this recording.
When part 2 starts it’s so heavy and claustrophobic it’s like being run over by a truck and then buried alive under a sumo ring with the soundtrack to each bout provided by neurosis. It’s the first time we hear the vocals in the recording and they are utterly inhuman, demonic shrieks mixed with low guttural roars and snarls which sound like hell itself.
The tempo changes are used carefully throughout this section providing some slight relief only to be relentlessly smashed again and again without mercy. At the same time draw you further and further into the heart of Widowmaker. The creaking violin in the background grows increasingly discordant and increases just keeps increasing that atmosphere.
Part 3 features a doom drop which could make an ordinarily healthy human being immediately drop dead of Ebola at fifty paces, and then spends the rest of it sounding uncannily like a horde of demons defiling their lifeless corpse.
I’m going to be honest, I can’t remember a time when an album has had such an impact upon me. it’s not easy listening, in places it’s absolutely terrifying and upsetting in a way, and yet has a savage breathtaking beauty to it, it make you feel like a rubber-necker at the worst accident in the history of mankind. Scared witless by the carnage yet oh so glad to be alive.
Savage, punishing, crushing, snarling, unrelentingly creative, and a level of craftsmanship which borders on insanity, dragged into sunlight have succeeded in creating a masterpiece which will go down as one of the greats.
In a year which has seen some truly fantastic albums released, and the bar has been raised consistently time and time again. Widowmaker has come along taken the bar and smashed it into small stakes and proceeded to impale you to the wall with them one by one.
When it finally finishes you sit stunned, and slightly numbed knowing you’ve just heard something which you’ll remember for the rest of your life.
10/10
Prosthetic Records website
Dragged Into Sunlight facebook page
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