Venusian Death Cell

Venusian Death Cell - Desolate Wastes
CDR

Venusian Death Cell - Thy Time
CDR

Venusian Death Cell - Place of a Skull
CDR



Regular readers will know that I hold the work of David Vora in high esteem. This one man Irish Metal outfit has been sending me his music for many years now and while to some it may sound like an unlistenable racket made by someone resembling the offspring of Stevie Vai and Derek Bailey I find his rawness and honesty a refreshing antidote to the Metal by numbers bands that haunt the black t-shirts of this world. You don’t need to be Stevie Vai to make a good record. Or Derek Bailey for that matter.

Vora records everything straight to tape; electric guitar, vocals [vokills] drums, a drum machine, the results being a deconstructed outsider lo-fi Metal, the sleeves decorated in Vora’s own hand, usually with lyrics attached, usually with a track about Halloween, this being [I think] the John Carpenter film about which Vora seems to be obsessed.

Little has changed over the years, in fact now that I think of it nothing has changed, the buzzy guitar is still there as are the rattling drums, his scream/shout vocals/vokills, the lo-fi straight to cassette sound, the Halloween track, the bit about religion, all instantly recognisable, most welcome and definitely Venusian Death Cell. Amongst these three releases though lies a change that I never saw coming.

For the first time Vora has chosen to sing about his schizophrenia. Its not something [unless I’ve been blind and missed it] that he’s chosen to open up about before.

On Place of a Skull you’ll find ‘Schizophrenic’:

Lack of motivation, life diminished
Constant distress, turmoil and unease
Awkward relationship to others
Madness or reality?

Extreme fear of germs
Constant body, hand and item washing
Physical and mental pain
Under duress, lack of talent

Overeating, cannot properly exercise
Seldom the disease and
Extreme distress abates
Extreme paranoia uncured
No love of life, hoarding


And ‘Emptied’ which has lyrics in a similar honest and distressing vein. This changes everything of course turning Venusian Death Cell from a curiously interesting outsider Metal outfit in to a band tackling the far deeper and darker waters of mental heath. The honesty cuts deep and its hard to read those lyrics and hear these songs without feeling empathy for Vora and what he’s going through. The Ceramic Hobs are the obvious comparison here and while they’re apart in style musically they’re both doing the job of highlighting mental health issues. They know, they’re the ones that are suffering.   

This seriousness of such subject matter doesn’t mean we should dismiss the rest of what we have here as more of what has gone before. On Thy Time Vora covers Pull the Plug by Florida band Death which if anything maintains the mood while on Desolate Wastes Vora pulls off an incredible whacked out version of The Corrs ‘So Young’ while tackling the Scorpions, Black Sabbath and Poison along the way. Cover version abound across both Desolate Wastes and Thy Time but its the rawness of Place of a Skull [Golgotha, the place where Christ was crucified], the majority of which written by Vora that’s the stand out release. All bar one of the ten tracks comes in at under two minutes the first and title track being a blistering drum machine blur of arms, strings and vocal chords, Destroyer has to be heard to be believed. He’s also taken to introducing songs at length [Spoken Word - its an actual track] and in one instance stretching them out past the five minute mark with a guitar only cover of Asphyx’s Forgotten War. Halloween VII continues the Halloween obsession and was suitably recorded on Halloween 2017. It contains the lyrics ‘Halloween seven’ and it is magnificent.





You can contact David at davidvora10 [at] hotmail.com