Nice. This is of course a reissue of the 1989 Saint Vitus classic, "V", which was of course their fifth full-length record, their third and final with the mighty Scott "Wino" Weinrich on vocals. Many still hail this album as a classic forerunner of the doom metal genre, and the reasoning for that still holds true to this day. Expect slow to moderate tempos, resonating percussion, Wino's patented croon, and a thick, pulsating recording where the guitar and bass tones blend together into one solid slab of churning mass. The Black Sabbath influence is of course evident, but this is still its own dark, menacing beast - best exemplified in the masterful plod of the 7+ minute "Patra (Petra)". "When Emotion Dies" is a quick little two-minute track layering male/female vocals over a killer melodic acoustic passage that's one of the more creative acoustic riffs I've ever come across - period. "Jack Frost" is another whopper at just around seven minutes, slow and destructive with an absolutely excellent vocal performance, not to mention a sick break of twisted and discordant feedback midway through. "Angry Man" is faster and more rocked out, bringing in some of the most obvious Sabbath influences in my opinion (especially during the chorus); and closer "Mind-Food" is similar but has a punk undercurrent to some of its chord progressions. As mentioned the recording is on the thick side, so in a sense it is a little muddy, but I don't mind it because the guitar tone is so oppressive and strange that it really adds to the character of the music. The density of the drums, while somewhat stifling, is actually sort of nice as well. The vocals sound awesome, my only complaint would be that the bass tone is generally incredibly hard to distinguish from the guitar - to the point where it really doesn't even sound like there's a bass guitar there. The layout stays true to the original as far as the cover art and whatnot, with a few high contrast images of the band inside with metallic gold printing. The layout's pretty minimal and stripped down, with clean text, minimal visuals, etc. The lyrical content is all personal on some level, a few tracks more abstract or psychedelic than others, with some becoming blunter and punk-esque in tone: "I don't need the madness that society breeds, I don't need the pressure comin' down on me, Why must you always stare, I ain't no fucking clown, Just want to live without somebody bringing me down..." The CD-Rom portion of the disc has a cool 30-minute video of Wino's first show with the band from way back in 1986, which consists of their complete five-track set. The audio can be a little rough at times (understandably), and the video is of course not perfect, but it's a solid straight on shot of the band in an odd setting where they're surrounded by off-white walls. It's pretty basic with zooms here and there, and it gets the job done better than a good amount of the live videos I come across. Overall my only minor gripe with this reissue is that I can't tell if it's been remastered or not. If not, it should've been, and if so, the output volume should've been made a bit louder and more consistent. Other than that I'm all for having this disc be readily available again. I mean, this is a classic fuckin' band whose influence is still heard rampantly throughout the scene, so you should know damn well what to look out for here.
[Southern Lord]
Running time - 36:37, Tracks: 8
[Notable tracks: Patra (Petra), Jack Frost, Mind-Food]
Southern Lord Recordings - http://www.southernlord.com
