Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By King Woman, Relapse Records 2021.
Continuing the theme of strong women begun in last week’s reviews I offer three more albums, starting with the impressive Kris Esfandiari of Oakland, California, and her band King Woman.
King Woman are often labelled as doom-rock but to my ears they are just a really good heavy rock/metal band.
Esfandiari is the lead singer and songwriter and Celestial Blues is basically a concept album in scope.
Like a lot of heavy metal bands Esfandiari and King Woman seem to be obsessed with biblical imagery and themes.
In Celestial Blues’ nine tracks Esfandiari chronicles Lucifer’s fall from grace and warns us not to judge her saying “you know it could have been you, so don’t you judge the things I do.”
Central to the King Woman sound is the explosive drumming of Joseph Raygoza along with Peter Arensdorf’s massively distorted guitar.
The instrumentation may be limited but that doesn’t mean that the sound is one-dimensional.
Esfandiari’s impressive, breathy, vocals, which range from a whisper to a demented howl, provide additional colouring and the band shape the songs to make the most of dynamics.
Songs like Golgotha and the final track Paradise Lost start with a gentle and sparse guitar motif before Raygoza’s drums herald the beginning of a building intensity.
By the time that Arensdolf crashes in with massive power chords the songs have taken on a completely different, and darker, colour before a sudden shift back to the delicate and sparse opening feel.
The movement between opposites of dark/light, fast/slow, and intense/sparse is a trademark of the King Women sound.
Celestial Blues is the second release for the band and they have gained the attention of music critics around the world including Rolling Stone who labelled Esfandiari as “the tour de force of gloom and woe.”
It’s an impressive album and an example of how heavy metal doesn’t have to be dominated by the obligatory, impossibly fast, guitar histrionics and screaming tenor vocals.
Celestial Blues is a masterclass of the importance of atmospherics and colour, even if the subject matter is dark.
