According to the works of renowned horror author Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Great Old Ones are a pantheon of colossal, all-powerful gods who arrived on Earth from outer space. These ancient deities ruled our planet long before mankind but have since fallen into a state of deathlike slumber beneath the sea.
In musical terms, however, The Great Old Ones are a five-piece extreme metal act who hail from Bordeaux, France rather than the fictional submerged cities of R’lyeh or Y’ha-nthlei. A band obsessed with the writings of the long deceased Rhode Island author, the Gallic quintet use their creative tentacles to probe into many different genres in an effort to spawn their otherworldly, cyclopean sound.
Following up their highly praised second album Tekeli-Li (Les Acteurs de l’ombre) was always going to be a tall order, but the band hasn’t just matched their last release, they’ve surpassed it with consummate ease. Whereas Tekeli-Li was based on the Lovecraft story “At The Mountains of Madness”, EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy (Season of Mist) is a concept album which serves as an original sequel to one of Lovecraft’s best known short stories, ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’.
An abbreviation of Esoteric Order of Dagon, the EOD of the title refers to the primary religion practiced in the fictional town of Innsmouth – a community populated with townspeople who, over many years, have interbred with “The Deep Ones”, a species of immortal, semi-humanoid amphibious ocean dwellers with piscine and frog-like features.
After a brief introductory piece, ‘Searching For R Olmstead’ (the narrator of Lovecraft’s original story), the band launch into ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’, a fast, chaotic opener suffused with swirling riffs, pounding drums, and inhuman vocals. ‘When The Stars Align’ follows with a grim, cavernous sound and a brooding, melancholic middle section. ‘The Ritual’ begins with the darkly portentous sound of ritualistic tribal drums before its central riff comes lurching hideously out of the darkness, it’s webbed, clawed fingers grasping for your helpless form until the briefest echo of Metallica‘s own ode to Lovecraft, ‘The Call of Ktulu’, arrives to rescue you from the moment.
‘Wanderings’ is a short interlude quickly followed by ‘In Screams and Flames’, another darkly melancholic song of many different, shifting faces. At just under eleven minutes in length, closer ‘Mare Infinitum’ is the album’s flagship: a labyrinthine tumult of changing moods and different tempos, wailing guitars, contrasting bass lines, and a haunting chorus of near-human voices.
An album of welcome contradictions, EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy is both claustrophobic and expansive, dissonant and canorous, surreal and ambitious yet also reassuringly conventional. Just close your eyes and let The Great Old Ones lead you to towards the shambling horrors which lurk within the eldritch dark.
9.0/10
GARY ALCOCK