Exhausted Prayer
Worst of All Possible Worlds
Label – TBD
Release date – TBD

It’s not much of a stretch to say that Exhausted Prayer are the only black metal band I know that sound like their home city of Los Angeles. The lengthy tracks on their 2005 EP Looks Down in the Gathering Shadow shifted from dissonance to wide-open “tall” harmonies, sounding like a brakeless car ride over L.A.’s cracked mess of freeways onwards to an endless sunset. Swansong and Heist’s guitars worked in gauzy textures and criss-crossing melodies even at their most furious, often breaking out into tasteful solo breaks; drummer Mike Caffell (also in Dreaming Dead, whose debut Within One was my favorite album of last year) kept the gears shifting relentlessly, investing his deft blasts with the deep pocket that so many of his trigger-happy black metal peers can’t muster. Like Ludicra or recent Enslaved, Exhausted Prayer’s black metal grows and consumes us gradually rather than than mowing us down with static blasting. As much as I adore Exhausted Prayer’s three-part vocal attack, this is one of the few black metal bands that could probably do fine as an instrumental group.

After the touring cycle for Looks Down in the Gathering Shadow wound down, Exhausted Prayer invested in nice equipment and took their their time in writing and recording the follow-up, tentatively called Worst of All Possible Worlds. The title refers to philosopher Gottfried Leibniz’s argument that ours is the best of all possible worlds, because it is the one that god designed in his omnipotence. Explains guitarist/vocalist Swansong: “We took the opposite, where there is no supernatural power controlling the outcome of events, and we are merely interacting and reacting with the universe, the world, and each other…according to Leibniz, pain and evil supposedly must exist to inspire courage and strong will, which means god must believe in compromise. Well we don’t believe in compromising reason, and we reject the charade of faith because all religions exist to divide and exclude ‘the other,’ while perpetuating pyramid scheme pay to pray spiritual status clubs.”

The five years that Exhausted Prayer took to construct the album shows, even on the two unmastered tracks that they’ve released on their MySpace page. The songs feels at once more cloistered and expansive than anything they’ve done before. They’re working with a larger array of riff styles, tempos and vocal approaches than ever before. Even unmastered, these songs sound completely kinetic — oily streams of muscular, blackened prog-metal, connected by passages of spectral twinkle. “I think it’s important to write parts that transition into each other well instead of just riff-stacking,” comments Swansong on the dynamic of the new album. “I really love that about masters like Bernard Herrman and Ravel, Prokofiev, Debussy, how they weave through different emotions and tempos like a dream; and all of that twisted beauty can just as easily be evoked in metal. We really tried to incorporate similar meandering harmonies that blend into each other and create a wash of tonal colors, while working within strong themes and unique song structures.”

Worst of All Possible Worlds will encompass nine completely new tracks, many of which Exhausted Prayer have honed while on tour. The band is waiting on the finished master and finishing up the artwork. No word yet on an exact release date or label (if any), but regardless of who releases it (if anyone), Worst of All Possible Worlds oughta turn a few heads. At least enough to keep Exhausted Prayer from playing to the same 20 folks in Los Angeles, gig after gig.

Check out the unmastered versions of “I Long for the Peace of a Cemetery” and “Can I Ask a Question” on Exhausted Prayer’s MySpace page.

-SR