Seum – Double Double
Self-Released
Release Date: 03.02.23
Running Time: 31:23
Review by Dark Juan
8/10
I was having a nosey through my review list and wondering might be a bit of what I fancy. No, not Mrs Dark Juan on this occasion. Perverts. I didn’t want anything that was going to take my head off because I have just returned to Crow Cottage after a particularly challenging bout of pissed-off teenager wrangling at work, completed in tandem with me actually getting fucking promoted (imagine Dark Juan being responsible and adult. I will wait until you stop laughing) and having to go to Head Office to pretend to be grateful for them giving me more work, although the £3k pay rise and £1k bonus ain’t to be sneezed at, to be fair, and your least favourite mangler of vowels, consonants and sentence structure is slightly fatigued and writing to find something to do to make beer o’ clock arrive faster.
So, your beleaguered correspondent opted to listen to an assigned (by the estimable Simon “Fucking Write About It Otherwise I’m Going To Eat Your Dogs, Scum” Black, in accordance with a new idea we have had at Ever Metal HQ, which is to be assigned an unsigned band who have submitted all their own stuff in an effort to get a lot more lesser-known bands out there for your attention, and your favourite Metal hacks out of their comfort zones a bit more, dear readers), unsigned band named Seum (which is Arabic for “Venom” and also French slang for disappointment and frustration).
Funny, when I worked at Altho making crisps in St. Gerand near Pontivy, “Putain!” normally covered all forms of negative emotion from extreme rage to profound disappointment. In return for being taught this by my wonderful French colleagues (who frequently put up with my poorly communicated English bullshit), I taught the workforce English swearing, so there were a load of French and Breton people shouting “MOTHERFUCKING SHITHOUSE!” when things were going tits up in their bit while I was shouting “PUTAIN!” at things going wrong in the vegetable cutting room and I was doused in beetroot juice) from Canada composed of three French expats, who have variously played in Lord Humungus (Gaspard – vocals. You already know where this is going and I am not sorry. Is Gaspard the Warrior of the Wasteland and the Ayatollah of rock n’ rolla? Enquiring minds wanna know), Mlah! (Piotr – bass. I want to know what the onomatopoeic root of that word is. Mlah! Not Piotr) and Uluun (Fred – drums). They play a style of music they have called Doom n’ Bass.
“Double Double” is the second full-length offering from these Canada-based nutjobs. I should point out that Seum do not have a guitar player and they are the Doom equivalent of Death From Above and Royal Blood as they are just composed of bassist, drummer and someone who can’t really be called a singer, as Gaspard instead chooses to employ the kind of mid-range, violent, visceral bark normally beloved of Black Metal screamers or Martin Walkyier when he was in Sabbat. This adds a kind of vigorous, angry dimension to their slightly punky, frequently uberstoned and always deranged sound.
I’ll be honest with you all here, I was not sure as to whether Doom with just bass and drums would be enough to hold the frequently jaded and distracted interest of your faithful correspondent, but opening gambit ‘Torpedo’ soon put paid to any doubts I had, as Seum just go straight for the throat with absolutely no foreplay, Gaspard’s sandpaper vocals ripping at the hearing of the listener. Piotr’s bass work is absolutely top notch stuff, being more than able to slam out sludgy, Doomy goodness and keep the groove going all by himself. In fact, it makes you wonder what guitars actually bring to Doom apart from a beardy weirdy playing the bluesiest solo he can get away with in an ultra-slow, planet-heavy song on the extended and interminable bridge…
Seum’s sound is a different affair to the one they employed on their debut platter, “Winterized”. That was literally worshipping at the altar of fuzz, but “Double Double” (being a Canadian term for a super strong, super sweet coffee with two scoops of everything) is rather different, having a much sharper, Punk-infused sound (the bass does have a remarkable similarity to Death From Above’s sound) with a serrated Metal edge, even though Seum are filthy dirty groovesters. Thunderous drums abound and they are magnificently produced. The bass drum is resonant and rich, rather than being the kind of truncated “Thud” noise that you normally hear from a bass drum on a Metal recording.
To conclude this load of words that are making even less sense than usual, this album is thicker than an emulsion of pitch and molasses, with more bottom end than a room full of cloned (but thankfully mute) Nicki Minajes, dirtier than the nuns in a convent in an 80’s porn flick, as infectious as the floor of said convent of spaff because I bet it ain’t been mopped in years and there’s more baby gravy been spilled there than Ron Jeremy has produced and as interesting as why my twisted and extremely tired mind chose that previous metaphor. Roll with it, Dark Juan, roll with it. No one reads this shit anyway. A worthy effort indeed from the USA’s more polite and civilised neighbour. Although poutine. Why? And Molson “beer” for that matter…
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Le système breveté d’évaluation des éclaboussures de sang Dark Juan, pour mes amis français et canadiens-français. Rappelez-vous, Dark Juan a vécu en France et parle assez bien… Alors, je saurai si vous êtes méchant avec moi, Seum…) awards Seum 8/10 for a splendid Doom record with an unusual gimmick attached. Marks have been deducted for possibly having a quite limited audience (although that would be a crime), ‘Toil And Trouble’, which is literally thirty seconds of fucking about that the band have recorded and serves about as much purpose as an ice cream van in Antarctica, and not deviating too far from the standard Doom imprint, when they could have gone flying off into all kinds of new realms of exploration. But, if you like Doom, and Dark Juan fucking loves it, you will dig Seum. Thank you for submitting it to us, mes amis.
It’s not goodbye, it’s au revoir.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Torpedo
02. Snow Bird
03. Razorblade Rainbow
04. Toil And Trouble
05. Dog Days
06. Dollarama
07. Seum Noir
08. Double Double
LINE-UP:
Gaspard – Vocals
Piotr – Bass
Fred – Drums
LINKS:
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