Now that Church Of Misery just keeps getting bigger and bigger and more popular with doom metal and sludgecore fans outside of Japan (with the threat of a possible American tour with Eyehategod looming on the horizon, and an appearance at the 2010 Maryland Death Fest that I will be front and center for), the band's formidable back catalog is finally getting reissued on labels like Emetic, finally allowing me to get my hands on discs like Volume 1 that had previously been pretty hard (or ridiculously expensive) to get a hold of. I'm not surprised that Church Of Misery have been getting so much attention lately; their massive, crushing doom stands tall over the hordes of Sabbath worshippers, and their fascination with serial killers and mass murder that seeps into their imagery and lyrics gives their groovy, psychedelic doom metal a much needed menacing vibe that's all too often missing from bands in this style. Not to mention, they are also masters of crafting the big riff, which is of course essential for any band mining the Sabbath sound.

Actually, Volume 1 has never been officially released until now, having only appeared previously as a bootleg released on some label called Doom Records back in the late 90's It's good that Emetic stepped in to finally give this a proper release, as this nascent material is incredibly good; fans of the band's debut album on Southern Lord will flip out when they hear these songs. It's got all of the massive elephantine grooves and titanic blooze riffs found on Master Of Brutality, the only real difference being that that this music was written prior to COM's obsession with serial killer subject matter, that concept not appearing with these early songs. But that doesn't detract at all from the saurian, Sabbathian doom metal, and even in this early stage, few are able to match Church Of Misery in terms of sheer heaviness; along with Goatsnake, they were the best of the bands to emerge out of the doom underground of the late 90s.

The disc kicks off with "Cloud Bed", an epic groove-orgy of lead-coated Sabbath riffs, Kazuhiro's quirky yowling vocals (which are sung in English) definitely reminiscent of Ozzy, but with a weird Eastern bent that ends up sounding totally unique. The resin-coated wah-wah freak outs pour out in black syrupy streams over the massive head-nodding grooves, and tracks like "Nutz", "Celebrate Pigs" and "Kingdom Scum" ooze with this molten bluesy sludge-doom. It's as good as this kind of slo-mo metal gets, crushing metallic heaviness laced with a classic bluesy swing, with a couple of psychedelic instrumental moments ("Frog's Funeral") and faster, iron-clad boogie metal eruptions (" Chilly Grave", "Race With The Devil") adding variety to Volume 1's murderous doom. As a bonus, this reissue also features shorter, alternative versions of two of the songs off of the album.