Band:	Walk Through Fire
Album:	Hope Is Misery
Style:	Doom metal, Sludge metal
Release date:	March 27, 2014
A review by:	R'Vannith

01. Sustained In Grief
02. Hope Is Misery
03. Grow Stronger In Isolation
04. Harden In Despair
05. Waking Horror
06. Next To Nothing
07. Another Dream Turned Nightmare
08. Laid In Earth

How slow will it go when you're bound to suffer?

This is metal rendered into reluctant abortions of noise for their sickly malformations of doomed sludge burning with the intensity not unlike that of the aggression enabling veins of Primitive Man. The reverb as projected at its most generously up-tempo is surprisingly gratifying, leaving you wondering whether you actually enjoy the prospect of audial abortions. It's unlikely that the listener will last until the end without certain frustrations rearing their ugly head, namely that old enemy known as "boredom."

Walk Through Fire are capable of extremely expressed monotony and successfully reducing the comparable sounds of Primitive Man into a state of sheer lethargy, ably dimming the lights to the point of zero visibility to best deliver their brand of slow burning hardcore vocalisation in a suffocating space of sludge within which you're doomed to die. For all who would encounter this monstrosity, it's all or nothing; get in, or get out. A rather blunt request from a band without compromise who would draw immense satisfaction from pulverising their audience in the most enduringly painful of ways.

The track entitled "Harden In Despair" is a solidification of the sound at its most accessible, "accessible" being as alien a term in this context as the lovable E.T. would be as alien a character in a horror film. There's a twenty-one minute track known as "Another Dream Turned Nightmare" toward the end of this album; it's a test, exam, interrogation and death sentence for all of those who would be bold enough to imagine that they can survive its unrelenting sprawl.

With an album possessing a polarising nature this extreme, it seems that I can only cling to odd and hopelessly nonsensical metaphors as my solace, to express my resultant state of discontent. Much of this record may well have been performed in complete darkness by a particularly coordinated sloth operating heavy machinery in an abandoned warehouse. I have my suspicions, and it's highly likely that it suspects me in turn. I can feel its steely gaze piercing my back, it's awfully dark in here, I can't see the way out and I don't have a torch; I'm doomed, essentially.

The extent of minimalism used in Hope Is Misery is far too cumbersome for a record that, at its best, specialises in such an impressionably striking rendition of sludge metal that punches aggressively through the mix. The slowest tempo found in the title track is tolerable, and sets the tone for the record with the noisily interjected sludge delivery with hardcore shouting made all the more menacing with the growled edge to them.

For its purposes the production is nigh perfect for the expression of a hard hitting rhythm section at its most forward delivery, as well as capturing that boredom inducing minimalist atmosphere taken up by many of the tracks which best exemplify thorough exercises in monotony.

If you like extreme metal, this is surely a test of resolve. Endure and enjoy, or suffocate and perish. To hope for more is to indeed be miserable.