Capital Brewing Evil Eye Red IPA...Devil - Time To Repent
It’s reached over 40 degrees here in Melbourne. That’s celsius, you imperial-loving fucks. Which in imperial is over 100 Fahrenheit. So it’s a good day to shelter inside and drink beer. This beer - Evil Eye Red IPA.
It’s by a brewery based in Canberra, Australia’s capital. Canberra is a boring shithole. The only good things that come out of Canberra are the people who escaped it in search of better places. Politicians make crooked deals there, public servants live and breed there like vermin, and worse than that, it gets colder than Melbourne in the winter. Even the surrounding countryside is boring and uninspiring (at least in my opinion). Think “generic Aussie outer suburb/scrubland” and there you have it.
Anyway, now that I’ve successfully pissed off people who actually LIKE Canberra (all two of you).... this brewery is great. Capital Brewing Co have done well with this IPA and with a pale that they do (which I will review a bit later down the track). According to their marketing, it’s named after a tree stump that had an evil eye painted on it. Cool. Can’t find an actual picture of this tree stump anywhere so it’s probably a load of bollocks. Still, I like the story. How does it taste? Very good. Not a “tear-off-your-head” IPA, this is somewhat more in keeping with an English style IPA: hops are much more pronounced, sure, but they’re not so strong that they linger like a lot of modern IPAs. It goes down quite refreshingly, and the dark malty aftertaste rounds it out nicely. It’s a very well crafted beer - dry enough and flavourful, but also with a heavy enough body to it to make it a substantial drink. I really like this beer and I’ll keep an eye on this brewery (NO I AM NOT GOING TO MAKE THE OBVIOUS JOKE).
This beer goes well with this record. Very well. It’s a mixture of fun, almost happy-sounding melodic doom whose core is evil and disturbing. The parallels are almost uncanny!
Devil are a Norwegian doom band who specialise in catchy music which sounds like it was recorded in a basement. It’s purposely lo-fi and that adds to its appeal. Its members (in true extreme metal Scandinavian style) are in or are alumni of loads of other bands of the thrash, black and death variety so this seems to be their outlet for fun evil 70s-inspired doom metal. It’s a raspy, rough affair but the songwriting is extremely polished: these guys clearly know how to write hooky guitar and vocal lines. It’s much less of the slow-as-molasses doom and much more Pentagram-esque evil romp, both terms applied equally. There’s something I find really charming about this type of deliberate throwback doom if it’s done right and these guys know what they’re doing. It took me a while to get used to the vocals as they’re a bit cheesy and delivered in an odd fashion, but in the end you get used to them and they become an integral part of the sound they’re going for. It’s nothing new and as unoriginal as it comes but you know, sometimes (actually, A LOT of the time), that’s what makes it good.















