Deveykus: Pillar Without Mercy (Tzadik, 6/18/13)
The slow, crackling burn of “Hasidic doom jazz” returns with Pillar Without Mercy, a full-length from Deveykus that shows Dan Blacksbergcoaxing the dark side out of his trombone. Over the course of six long tracks and nearly an hour of music, the band successfully merges the somber, funereal tones of Ashkenazic Jewish music with warped, low doom-metal tones.
Tracks like “Visions of the Chariot” emerge at a crushingly glacial pace, with guitar distortion sustaining itself to feedback. But as is the case with all the tracks on Pillar Without Mercy, the airy sound of Blacksberg’s trombone cuts through the murk. The album smolders with an electric intensity that holds back until the very end, when it explodes in a free-form burst in the two-part suite of “The Four Worlds of Creation,” stirring the worlds of doom, free jazz, and Hasidic music into an even louder mixture.