Vaisseau

The Spooky Digital Terrors of "Horrors Waiting in Line" Are Worth the Wait (Album Premiere)

Doom metal was a novel genre pioneered by a classic formula — drums, guitars, and bass creating something heavy and unusual. As long as the result remains heavy, bespoke, and unmistakably doomed, I reckon the formula should allow for some substitution. Conventions are made to be broken, after all, and French duo Vaisseau (meaning “space shift” in French) traveled from a nightmarish plane beyond our own to show us what may come of bending the rules. They offer a delightful sci-fi horror construction of “synth doom,” whatever that may be. We’re streaming their debut album Horrors Waiting in Line in full below.

Don’t waste too long trying to figure out what might be going on in the outlandish cover art — you’re going to need those brain cells for deciphering the music, which pairs macabre synthesizers with organic drums that ground the otherwise bizarre sonic profile. The locked-down-tight grooves and slow, cyclical melodies, notably on “Lo Spettro Della Frustrazione,” are soothingly ritualistic. Going back to the album art, that might start to explain why a host of many-toothed abominations are patiently queued up to enter a sentient teepee: there’s probably some even weirder religious machinations behind the obscuring golden light.

That sense of horror-laced fantasia ties the album together, cementing the aesthetics and connecting the disparate sounds within: from the krautrock-infused interludes of “Sonic Dislocation” to the heavy synthwave-esque motifs in “Force Macabre: From Deep Space, Down to the Styx,” (what a great title!) there’s always a weighty air of suspense atop the science fiction trappings. Heavy, unusual, alien and engrossing — never mind the categorization, let’s just hope that Vaisseau continues to make more of it.

Horrors Waiting in Line releases March 17th via Totem Cat Records.

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