Suffer Yourself: "Ectoplasm"

This doom band from Sweden is pretty impressive. They have the right amount of atmosphere and on the first song show they can cover a wide range of dynamics while remaining true to the genre. The second song is six minutes longer than the ten minute opener and not as grandiose. The point seems to be the heaviness, though that is not to say they do not still value guitar melodies and textures. Production wise this album is pretty much perfect, this is a great blue print to use for mixing what doom should sound like. They pick up the pace into an almost oppressive death metal chug towards the latter end of the song.

"the Core" starts off in a more hushed atmospheric tone. This song shows despite the more droning and ponderous songs on the album that they can deliver in a more concise fashion, even though this song drone and throbs in a similar fashion to the longer pieces it proves they can trim the fat when called for.  This is followed by the 19 minute "Dead Visions" . I really have a hard time believing any song needs to be twenty minutes long. Even with the lingering ambiance of the opening the metal crunches into place at the two and a half miute mark. They are playing at a more funeral doom like part which takes them longer to get there, but even then is it justified? After a spoken word part it does wind it's way to a more interesting section that blends the darkness of their mood with a heavy chug and cool double bass work. There are sound effects looped in of a woman crying to take things to an even lower level of spookiness. I think the last three minutes of this song are pretty much unneeded.

The last song is what might happen if Watain took acid in the studio. It is more of an outro interlude than a song. I'll give this album an 8.5, it might have scored higher if some of the songs had the fat trimmed.These guys are onto something and like to hear what happens when the song writing matures.