The one and only Woe J. Reaper, the Mad Hatter of Black Metal, returns with an all-new mad tea party to mess up our perception of reality. Every form of music needs a jester, a raconteur, to shake things up. Mr. Reaper, operating under the name of FURZE, has been doing that since the late ’90s, creating an indefinable version of low-fi black metal that mixes in generous dollops of doom and warped psychedelia. It shouldn’t work…yet it does.

Crazy titles and song names are part of the FURZE experience and Caw Entrance lives up to that reputation. I suspect there is meaning behind all of Reaper’s creations, but only he has the key to it all. It’s best to just lay back and roll with the weirdness of FURZE like it’s an amusement park ride…which, in a sense, it is. The sound here is “low fi” but not “no fi”…it’s raw and murky, the furthest you can get from Nuclear Blast digitized production. The music ranges from aggressive, almost out of control black metal speed to sluggish, syrupy doom metal. I’d say the doom actually predominates, like on ‘You Shall Prevail’. Solos are twisty psych freakouts and improvised jamming. Occasionally ancient sounding organ or wacky synth makes an appearance to add extra insanity. Speaking of insane, Woe’s vocals are generally gruff, but can also veer into robotic monotones, crazed laughter and what sounds like a cartoon supervillain’s voice.

It wouldn’t shock me greatly to learn this was all just jamming done in one or two takes. It has that unpredictable “made from scratch” aura. Some tracks like ‘Post Mortem Trippin’’ and ‘You Shall Prevail’ are really long. ‘W.I.R.E.’ and ‘Avail The Autocrat Of Evil’ are more compact but no less quirky than the longer stuff. FURZE is a reminder of the wild and woolly days of musical adventure and unbridled creativity…like the earliest days of ’90s black metal or even further back to when psych rock exploded in the late ’60s.

Keep metal weird! Keep FURZE rolling…pick up Caw Entrance and stick it up to boring by the numbers metal!
Review By: Dr. Abner Mality

FURZE
Caw Entrance
Devoted Art Propaganda