Welcome to a creed of pain as 'III' hits our most baleful fears

LET’S face it, heavy music isn’t always designed for reflect happy thoughts. In our world of distorted guitars, heavy bass and damned drums lyrically our music is a mélange of flavours of hatred and hopelessness, torment and terror.

Yet we often emerge invigorated from the fire of metallic passion able to look life anew; a cynic’s heart is the heart of the true optimism, optimism that one day the world and its people will not be messed up forever.

To those outside the circle, well as Baleful Creed put it at one point in this EP: “You people don’t have a clue”

This is Baleful Creed’s third adventure into the magical mystical world of EPs. And they have cunningly entitled it ‘III’ in case we get confused where to put it in our alphabetised, ordered by release date collections

And this is a worthy addition to your collection of local excellence.

Double F.S. kicks with a slow-burn, down and dirty opening before the tempo stabilises into a rolling riff; the chorus kicking a melodic shock to the taste of filthy rhythm before the solo caresses the bottom feeders to rise to another level

Track two Autumn Leaves has a dark, dreamy quality, with a persistent riff underpinning the nightmare theme, the resonant lyric of a shallow grave adding to the haunting bluesy groove.

Next up we have a down-tuned Sabbath circa Masters of Reality butting heads with Down with agony and a snarl in Thorazine. It has a sweet chorus of hope after the riff has nailed your ass to the floor of despair.

For a song named after the controversial schizophrenia drug the dreamy mid-section sits just about right, before that riff and snarl come back with a vengeance and hope resurfaces.  Angst never felt so good

And here is a lot of the BC secret: for all the influences and nods to the past they have carved their own furrow; the music isn’t always what is expected, and the lyrics have an intelligent undertow.

This is evident on Illuminati with its brief atonal counterpoint in the opening serving to keep you off balance before the ferocity of the lyric smashes complacency and the bridge gets you prepped for the next onslaught of brutal lines. The hope in here is the hope of the cathartic feeling when a fist smashed into an enemy’s face that makes everything feel better:

Concluding with six minutes of heavy groove on Misanthrope, there is clean, sweet singing and a blues sensibility – misanthropy is a hatred of the human race in general;  but if BC hate us all so much why are they sharing these great tunes. Four odd minutes into the groove the tempo arches upwards for dual solos that are measured as well as shredding: a fitting coda for this chapter of BC’s development.

And it is development, there are subtle touches and arrangements that at first seem straightforward, but have hidden treasures. ‘III’ is a waypoint for Baleful Creed, a significant milestone for the band and yet further proof that for all the misery and misanthropy you can produce something truly enjoyable.