Obed Marsh : "Dunwich"

If you want to hear death doom done really fucking right so that it's more doom and not just slow death metal, then check out this mean mother fucker. From Australia , their previous album "Innsmouth" had some gnarly spewed vocals this one has out done that performance in the first two songs alone. Some of this might be thanks to the attention to detail in the production this time around. The guitars have a more angular dissonance to them which also helps paint this unnerving picture. There are some interludes that I am just deleting as I go so for the sake of this review we are only counting the songs. The first two songs do have a similar sound. Like many extreme metal bands , after the first stunning blow they hit you with wears off then it boils down to song writing. "Necornomicon" ...which if you had not caught on this is a Lovecraft themed band, give you more breathing room and a melody of sorts begins to drip from the shadows.

 Things stay just as dark and get more melodic as the chords are allowed to ring out more on "Wreathed in Ivy"as the song builds momentum some guitar melodies do float out to give it more substance. "Matricidal Lineage" is dense and throbs with a heavy pulse but doesn't do a hell of a lot to set it self aside as a song. Their sound is good. If might even feel evil it gets so dark. They need to do a lot more in order to keep my interest for the almost 13 minute closing song " the Dunwich Horror" . It takes three and a half minutes to really get this one started. As the album progress I notice the vocals take on more of a snarl and less of an anguished growl to allow the lyrics to become more discernible. It does find them locking into a similar feel.

I would say the songs on "Innsmouth" might have been written a little better, but this album sounds better and finds them adding more atmospheric layers, though the songs do being to develop a more uniform sound by the end. I'll give this an 8.5 and see how it sits with me.

Obed Marsh : " Innsmouth"

With nasty rasped vocals this sludged dipped doom band delves into Lovecraft. It sounds like their singer is being turned into an aspect of Dagon as he croaks his guts out. It's the gloomy lethargy the opening song is paced with that solidifies this as doom in my book. Their are some low chanted vocals, but for the majority of the seven minutes you are spewed out. If you can dig into your nightmares and try to fathom how something could sound even darker than than this, you would find it is the sound of demon disembowelment that occurs on the second song.Here the band is face with the challenge I pose to other bands who reach the extreme degrees of heaviness...o.k now what else can you do ? The answer is still murky midway into the second song.

One thing these guys should be commended for is not feeling obligated to write songs over ten minutes.They do create a droning ambiance of sorts in places without having to drag it out for extended periods of time."Usurpers" lets the pound of the drum linger, but still stays under seven minutes even though guitar doesn't kick in for the first minute. My question is answered by the atmosphere  that hangs off this song like cobwebs dripping with slime. They excel in touching on a place that makes them as heavy sonically as they are metal. There is more of a metallic cloud of noise overwhelming the oppressive " Deficient". While it works off of a similar throb that has worked so well up to this point at four minutes in I begin to think it needs something more dynamic to break things up.

The longest song comes in at ten minutes and carries a more funeral doom like guitar melody that floats over it . The snare sound on this song is rawer. The song wallows in the distortion of the final minutes. "Seeping Wombs"has a more sinewy riff. It's more fuzzed out and tramples you under it's weight, but doesn't do much more to provide a greater sense of dynamics to the album as a whole.  Going into this know that for the duration you are in for crushing doom with the filth of death metal coating it. These guys should get props for having some of the wickedest growls set to record this year. Normally after a few songs growling can get old for me if it is not varied yet here it works. I'll round this one up to a 9.