Deadbird : "III-The Forest Within the Tree"

Music plays a large role in my mental health for better of for worse. Sometimes it can allow me to fig deeper into depression, but when I am crawling out of my skin anxious I need to be brought down a little, funeral doom is the best for this, but I am still waiting on the new Evoken so this band out of Arkansas is going to have to do.  The vocals have a grungey Alice In Chains feel. The guitars are very much legit doom when they kick in. Very layered with clean strums thrown into the chords. While the first shade of vocals we get on this album are cleanly sung they do have grit to them rather than trying to make the melodies soar over the music. The second song might build into a "Children of the Grave" chug , but these guys are not simply Sabbath worshipers despite being a doom band. The howling of screamed vocals comes in midway into the second song.

They ride the lumbering drone of "Heyday" in a more Sleep like manner with it's monolithic fuzz. It does ebb down into a more melodic section. They roar back with more of a bull dozing sludge feel on " Alexandria" . It is a much more straight forward song . The bass leads into the instrumental "11:34", a cool idea that could have been worked into an actual song. The more brooding beginnings of "Brought Low" remind me of something Dax Riggs might have done. It has a slow dark simmer. It was beginning to become my favorite song on the album , until the howling vocals made it feel like they took the easy out dynamically. The clean vocals do return for the chorus and things stay relatively dark.  I think aside from pulling from the box of stock metal dynamics it might still be the albums best song.

There are some pretty powerful moments in the chug attack of " Bone & Ash". It is to the point and in your face. It even accelerates into a more punk fueled brand of sludge. I'll give this album a 9 and see how it sit with Me. The darker moments are really great, some of the more straight up sludge parts, just sound like you would expect that sort of thing to sound, though less Neurosis. The harsher vocals add to things and give a wider depth that Pallbearer doesn't venture into in terms of the range of heaviness, though Pallbearer has these guys in terms of melodies and the comparison is really due in part to the Arkansas connection, what makes those people love doom I do not know.