HEMPRESS ~ MASTERS OF THE TRADE ..... review

William Gunn (bass/backing vocals), Jeffrey Ponce-Carre (drums), David Lamothe (guitars) and Kurtis Labelle (vocals/guitars) are Hempress a Canadian quartet from Gatineau, Québec with a penchant for writing lyrical ditties concerning the darker side of life. If your lyrical content is based around drugs, murder, extra-terrestrials and horror then its more or less a given that the music you surround those lyrics with is going to carry a similar dark and dismal dynamic and Hempress do not disappoint on that score. Hempress' sound is a gnarly blend of grainy stoner metal and sludgy doom fronted by semi- harsh demonic toned vocals that sit just the right side of understandable, something you will no doubt discover for yourselves when checking out their debut release "Masters Of The Trade".

If you want to attract Desert Psychlist's attention to your music then there is no better way to do that than by gracing your grooves with artwork similar in style to that once gracing the covers of comics like Marvel's "Creepy" and DC's "Witching Hour" and Indonesian artist Resy Purnomo has certainly captured that vibe with his excellent illustration for "Masters Of The Trade". The second way to attract our attention is to have the necessary grooves in your armoury to compliment that artwork and Hempress have those grooves in abundance.

"From The Sky" opens "Masters Of The Trade" its dark droning intro, eerie and slightly dissonant, slowly morphs into a gnarly distortion and fuzz drenched proto-doomic groove that although may have its roots in Sabbathian soil is probably closer in dynamic to the current wave of "scuzzy" acid doom coming out of the Italian underground scene from bands like Wizard Master and Demonio. This "scuzziness" is further accentuated in the vocals that accompany this song, and for that matter all the songs on "Masters Of The Trade", with Kurtis Labelle not so much singing as tunefully sneering his way through the eight songs on offer, his vocals bordering on harsh and demonic but possessing much more clarity than is usually associated with this type of delivery.  Musically Hempress are all about the riffs and they serve up some beauties on this album with Labelle and Lamothe crunching out thick reverberating grainy refrains on songs with titles like "Melancholy Of A Dead Flower"," Funeral Haze" and "Into The Doomshere" ably supported in their endeavours by Gunn's deep growling bass lines and Ponce-Carre's tight thunderous drumming. Desert Psychlist is not sure if it is Labelle or Lamothe handling the guitar solos on "Masters Of The Trade" or a combination of both but they are delivered dark dank and swirling with just the merest hint of Iommi-esque tonality in their execution.

If you, like us, have been digging the "scuzzy" acid doom that has been slowly creeping out of Italy lately then this Canadian take on that same dynamic is going to be right up your street. Gnarly, slightly untamed and proto- doomic Hempress' "Masters OF The Trade" might not be everybody's cup of tea but it is ours and it might well be yours.

Check it out ...... 

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