Judgment Day with Church Of Misery at Channel Zero (2009)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

Venue: Channel Zero / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 05.05.2009
Attendance: 40
Ticket price: 7.00

Channel Zero, the alternative stronghold of Slovenia’s rock underground, came alive on 05.05.2009 in the peculiar vibe of two seriously interesting bands who teamed up for a European tour. The combo is Atlantis and Church Of Misery. The first are Dutch and play a kind of indie heavy rock, dressed up in electronic sound curtains, with the vocals stripped out of the songs entirely. A touch of post-rock figures is by no means ruled out. Church Of Mysery are Japanese doom metallers who conjure organic seventies sounds on stage and fire them straight into the world Black Sabbath knew in the era with Ozzy Osbourne in the lineup. The latter were presenting their freshly released third album on this tour, House of the Unholy. Funnily enough, the album came out 14 days before Church Of Misery rolled into Ljubljana for the gig, and in that time on tour they sold out of it completely. On vinyl and on CD alike.

The massive riff figures of Atlantis, often backed by Mellotron-sounding keyboards, repeat their simple basic phrases over and over, and that’s what makes them hypnotic. Vocals are off the menu, so the listener can get even deeper into the unique atmosphere the instrumental Atlantis build. It’s a quintet of five stallions who often don’t even bother with a bass guitar on stage. Instead they unleash a massive wall of sound from three distorted guitars, propped up by the drums, with a third dimension added by the drifting electronic shroud of background synths. The fourth dimension, of course, the listener more or less builds for themselves, if they manage to switch off once they make contact with the band. There’s a moment of esotericism in this music, and that’s a fact you can’t get around. The quintet played with real commitment. Given the bizarrely simple form of the basic motifs, which are of course packaged in layered sound and noisy, invasive force, it’s hard to believe a performer can disconnect completely and just go with the flow. And yet those layers of sound build a lofty mood. Maybe the best proof of the quintet’s spontaneity was the moment when one of the three guitarists, in the heat of furiously “tearing” at the strings with his pick, blew out a guitar string, which he ripped off the neck mid-song with his bare wrist. Doing that, you can easily give yourself a nasty cut, but luckily that didn’t happen to the lad. Atlantis are a seriously fascinating band. What drives them there is the creation of an extraordinary atmosphere, one that pulses and undulates, maybe even transcendental(?). That’s of course a subjective observation, one person’s verdict among many. It depends on how receptive each pair of ears is.

On the keyboards a loop was built, often a chosen sound, memorized into a delay effect so it kept accompanying the three guitars’ blazing while the keyboardist gave his fingers a rest. Atlantis can be extremely dark, which the song This Is Our Time Of Death confirmed especially well, while at moments the post-rock elements can rock the listener deep into a dream, as the song The Last Dance showed, with its slowly lumbering “beat”, and a sticky wash of spacey keyboards and guitar mass.

The point of Atlantis is creating a highly vibrant, cataclysmically gloomy atmosphere. Playing technique doesn’t matter. Imagination takes the lead this time. This Is Heavy is the single they put out recently, and live it crawled under the skin especially nicely with its catchy melodicism, simple guitar phrase and thick, intoxicating wall of sound. A great warm-up for Church Of Misery.

Atlantis are as pretty as Church Of Misery are ugly. The Japanese quartet is a perfect replica of the sound of seventies rock. They stick to the axioms laid down by their great role models and the core of their inspiration, Black Sabbath. The ones with Ozzy in the lineup, of course. Church Of Misery play Gibson guitars (the SG model, like Tony Iommi had), and the bass is a Rickenbacker. That alone says a lot about how the band looks. And if we go on from there, with everyone in the quartet wearing tight jeans that flare out into bell-bottoms at the bottom, those images from a good thirty-five years ago are sketched out even more clearly before your eyes.

The Japanese are superbly tight. Everything revolves around the heavy guitar riff, wrapped in doom fashion in semitone thunder, a stuffy, slow, muffled shifting of notes within the basic guitar phrases, occasionally embellished with the groaning of witty passing ornaments, built on simple “pull-off” tricks from just one, two or at most three notes. The songs also come with guitar solos, which make no secret of looking up to Tony Iommi. That’s very nice indeed, considering that many doom bands usually just skip the guitar solos. Church Of Misery have an explosive singer in their ranks, who impressed above all with an unbelievably powerful voice. That voice is raw, incredibly sharp and rough, and totally uncompromising in delivery. Probably of all the elements that make up the band’s image, it’s the one that first shocks the listener and actually wins them over. And of course the opposite applies too. It can leave you totally cold and put you off. This singer’s quirk is the sieve for Church Of Misery, deciding who ends up among the band’s fans. Hideki Fukasawa is a singer who gives the band, given the genericness of the doomer template, recognizability and a touch of something special. The dude looked properly wasted, staring blankly ahead, theatrically dropping to his knees on the stage a few times or flinging the mic to the floor, whipping his hair around freely and sweating buckets all over the stage. His act was unbelievably real and honestly kind of demonic. With that charisma he made the Church Of Misery gig fly by in a blink. At the end he surprised everyone with a long jump off the stage into the crowd, then disappeared from the hall to relieve himself in the restrooms. It’s hell when your own physiology doesn’t obey you and basically lets you down!

Bassist Tatsu Mikami also grabbed some attention, especially because his bass hung so low on the strap that the body of the instrument almost touched the floor. That meant Tatsu couldn’t reach the strings over the pickups anymore, so he just slid his right hand along the neck. Church Of Misery are a tremendously tight team who won over absolutely everyone present at Channel Zero that night. The gig went by damn fast, since the guys were seriously convincing in every aspect of their performance. The winning points of the foursome’s show were above all an extraordinary touch of spontaneity and immersion in playing their own original material, a self-assured stance in every note, verse or drum swing, and a flawless performance. Church Of Misery are the real deal. They simply believe in the magic of doom! A one-of-a-kind live event that definitely deserved more support from the crowd and fans of heavier sounds!

photos: Miha Mally