Courtesy Messiahvore
Audio By Carbonatix
Messiahvore is loud as hell. The Denver sludge band thoroughly enjoys building a “wall of sound” at concerts, says bassist Jenn McCrorery. Her playing, paired with that of her husband, Bart McCrorey (lead vocals and guitar), and Kevin Disney (vocals and guitar) is responsible for the band’s massive sound, which it calls “organized noise.”
Throw in the technical drumming of Brokk Dagaz, and Jenn warns that you should probably “bring your earplugs.” Ear protection is also available at the band’s merch table, she adds.
Bart, who also runs the Crash Pad Studio, notes that Disney’s five-string baritone guitar also bolsters Messiahvore’s dark sound. “He has more of that lower mid-range sound, where I’m sitting on top of that. Jenn would be below him. That helps with the thickness of the sound,” he explains. “It adds to the layers more. He’s good at making cool noises and shit like that.”
A baritone guitar is a longer-scale instrument that plays better when tuned down. A crossover between a bass and a traditional six-string guitar, the strings stay tighter at lower tunings, and that’s a good thing for playing down-and-dirty, mid-tempo sludge metal.
“We kind of mix that ’90s groove metal with sludge and doom and stoner metal. It’s kind of a conglomeration of that for us. We like the artistic approach to it, the noise and sonics. It’s also groove-heavy,” Bart explains. “We like bopping our heads when we play. I just like the thickness of it. We tuned to C standard and sometimes down to A sharp, so it’s a lower tuning. It’s a different feel.”
With impressive musical résumés that include playing in local bands including Pitch Invasion and Throttlebomb over the years, the McCrorerys were looking to form a band that leaned a little bit more on the heavier side, and Messiahvore was officially born in 2018. “We decided we wanted to do something different, heavier, sludgier,” Bart recalls. “I had a number of tunes written from the get-go. Kevin started helping writing as well.”
After a handful of singles, Messiahvore released a self-titled LP in 2021, and is set to put out Transverse this year via Golden Robot’s Iron Head Records. The band is playing a record-release show for Transverse on Saturday, April 8, at the hi-dive. Cobranoid, Lost Relic and Moon Pussy are also on the bill. A limited number of Transverse physical copies will be available, as well, before its official release on streaming platforms later this year.
Recorded between Avalanche Recording Studio and the Crash Pad, Transverse is the first Messiahvore album showcasing Dagaz’s writing. The band also took advantage of low-end sonics, which have essentially become a trademark at this point. “This is the first time we’ve gone so low. People ask us if we’re a doom band, and I always joke and say, ‘It’s more gloom than doom,'” Bart says.
Jenn adds that there was “a little bit of a different approach” on this latest offering: Bart and Dagaz were the two primary songwriters, then Jenn and Disney added in their parts once the pieces were nearly complete.
“Brokk is definitely a metal drummer,” Jenn says of Dagaz’s death-metal history and chops. “The way we approached this one is basically Bart and Brokk went into the studio and wrote the tracks, and then we wrote around them.”
The recent material is reminiscent of New Orleans-style sludge. The southern city essentially created the subgenre in the 1990s with bands like Crowbar and Down crawling forth from the bayou with syrupy guitar tones and a heavy dose of groove.
Take a Messiahvore tune such as “Doublecross,” which starts so slow you might think there’s something wrong with your turntable. But about halfway through, the groove kicks in, and the song takes off full-throttle, like a runaway Harley-Davidson. The listening experience is exhilarating in that sense, and Bart says that innovating such sounds is just as satisfying, too.
“Pretty much everything I’ve done has been guitar-driven,” he says, adding he has some fun with “writing darker-sounding riffs and things that don’t move as fast.”
“We’re kind of a mid-tempo band,” Bart says. “We’re not so sludgy or doomy that there’s five minutes between notes or anything like that. It’s just been cool kind of slowing down and making things heavy and punchy.”
While they’re involved in the music world on several fronts, Bart and Jenn consider Messiahvore their heaviest project to date, and they’ve enjoyed carving out a unique path with the band.
“I don’t know what else I’d be doing. Watching TV? I don’t know. This is just what I do,” Jenn says. “It was really just born of us wanting to play something heavier – just do something a little bit different than what we’d been doing, which was pure rock and roll.”
Bart calls Messiahvore “pretty high-energy for a mid-tempo group” when it comes to performing. So again, don’t forget those earplugs.
“Definitely expect some groovy, heavy, head-bopping stuff,” he adds. “We like the sonic wind and feedback vibe. We let things ring out a bit.”
Messiahvore, 8 p.m. Saturday, April 8, hi-dive, 7 South Broadway. Tickets are $12-$15.
