Parish – Parish (2022) / 78%

Freshly cut grass and lightly fried fish filet from the local tavern with room temp ale

The English label Crypt of the Wizard (great name) has been releasing a few bangers recently with the traditional doom metal of Woe, the Lord of the Rings’ heavy rock of Riders of Rohan and more interestingly in our case, the first releases of London’s Parish. Their formula is highly enjoyable and intensely catchy. Let’s see why.

I see Parish as a sort of heavier response to the pastoral christian heavy metal/hard rock of fellow brits Wytch Hazel. While the band led by Jesus’ favourite troubadour Colin Hendra leans more towards Thin Lizzy or Jethro Tull, Parish are huge Sabbath simps and I love it. Their 70s sound is mixing ethereal vocals (see Ghost, the vocal approach is similar) with a folk tinged doom metal approach paying homage to the greats (see Budgie, Witchfinder General, Sabbath but also Wishbone Ash). Their songs are about witches, the countryside, wenches, taverns and other occult stuff. It's their bread and butter and I’ll spread their themes all over my buns for sure. It’s fun stuff and packs an extra punch.

The power trio rocks, it’s a tight forty minutes album without any filler, it’s direct and to the point. The riffs are solid (see “Cunning Murell”) albeit the band is somewhat generic and owes a lot to what came before them. That’s a stylistic choice, it’s hard to make “new” classic traditional heavy/doom anyway. To me, they’re both heavy and soothing at the same time, I think that’s a rare feat. A band like Pagan Altar has it as well.

Parish possess this ghostly quality that makes them stand out (somewhat) from the doom crowd. I do think that there’s some added elements that makes them worth your time if your itch of checking new bands is present but  after a while, it becomes somewhat tiring and it's not really an album I'll revisit often instead of hitting the doom classics. Still worthwhile though! It's good English countryside heavy/doom that smells like freshly cut grass with the light aroma of fried fish filet.

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