From the first recording session through to the present day, it’s taken almost eighteen months for What Is Imposed Must Be Endured (Black Bow Records), the debut album from Sheffield-based quartet Blind Monarch, to see the light of day. In that time the band has shared stages with leading lights of the UK Death-Doom scene so it wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to suggest that this album is eagerly awaited.Continue reading
Scottish doom metal band Ommadon has decided to break up. The band made the announcement with a terse Facebook post today, offering no further details. The band was signed to Dry Cough Records but was also affiliated with At War With False Noise (UK), and DGR Entertainment (USA). They release their latest album End Times this past spring. Continue reading
This torturously heavy UK trio Monoliths is so recently formed that I couldn’t dig up anything on them for weeks. Knowing that it was comprised of members from Bismuth, Moloch and Ommadon, however, enlightened me to my fate for the following half-hour.
Getting crushed by a Fuck-off monster of a traction engine. If our US cousins aren’t too sure what one of those is…well, it’s not an easy way to go. The first of two colossal tracks on début Monoliths (Dry Cough Records /Crown & Throne Ltd.), ‘Perpetual Motion’, begins and ends with a disturbing fuzz that leaves you in no doubt what’s coming and, in closing, what has just been. Tanya Byrne’s swerving bass thrum knocks you off your feet but, as the track ebbs and flows, nuances appear as mini-crescendos swirling around the mind. David Tobin’s solo breaks the Om-esque hypnosis which the terrifying riff and Henry Davies’ wondrously tempered drums hammer through the solar plexus, hardly breaking the lumbering pace yet bewitching the senses with its pulverising might. I’m not usually one for instrumentals but this carries me to far-off lands on the back of a yeti.
The monumental, everlasting pummel of ‘The Omnipresence of Emptiness’ takes a short while to move through the volume, and to that familiar bass bellow. Yet when the whole thing crashes together it is a life-ending implosion, carrying depth and weight suitable for the occasion. Missing the latent groove of its forefather, subsequently this is the harder track with which to find an immediate affinity until the most unnerving, horrifying roar introduces a shattering solo. It’s here where one realises the flattening power of the drums, while the other ingredients of this plundering sortie become so unfathomably heavy I completely lost where I was, bemused by the sheer weight yet moved by a scintilla of emotion.
Look, this is no epiphany. It is, however, a near-perfect slab of evil Doom and an excuse for lovers of this stuff to completely lose their shit. In making something usually so monotonous and pulverising sound immediate, occasionally moving, and unmissable, Monoliths prove themselves an essential addition to the Low-end canon.
8.5/10.0
PAUL QUINN
Doom tends to be somewhat formulaic, it’s part of its gloomy charm. To be appreciated fully it’s generally best to be played at skeleton shaking volume. As a whole the genre isn’t particularly suited for records unless you happen to have a wall of cabinets in your house raring and ready to give your neighbours tinnitus. Ommadon’s eponymously titled album on Dry Cough Records follows that doom formula very well. Fleshed out with production from Billy Anderson meaning that the tone is excellent throughout both tracks.
The problem sets in somewhat with the fact that as it’s a two-piece instrumental doom act, they’ve kind of played themselves into a corner. What they do is good, but there’s not really all that much which they can do to make it stand out from the many other doom bands playing the same standard ‘bumbum bumbum BAAAM’ doom riff.
By foregoing vocals, the focus goes entirely onto the music to carry the emotion of the piece and unfortunately no matter how good the tone or the performance the standard hit the guitar/drums, wait, repeat formula just lacks an emotional depth after hearing it repeated for half an hour.
That’s not to say that it doesn’t have merit, with the tone and competency I would imagine this really comes into its own live, with the benefit of much higher volume, a mesmerised audience filling a small sweaty venue on a dreek day. Then it would have relevance and connect with the listener.
However, on record there’s nothing really hear which separates it from any other doom band I’ve heard. What it does is competent, with a great tone. However, there’s little to make it stand out from the crowd.
6.0/10
RICH PRICE