If I was to say this album is symphonic folk metal you would assume it was elf drinking songs mixed with Cascadian black metal band when they are in full blast mode. The second album by this Texas band starts with the ambient swell of violin, before launching off into blast beats. This band is graceful in the way they shift into the gentle sweeping passage with clean vocals. His vocal has clarity and not unlike Pallbearer, just not as high of a tenor. While they do get into that Wolvesinthrone room trend of a sixteen minute song, the time is used wisely and they drape it with some wonderfully some ghostly sounds and female vocals that float out of the melancholy. There is some post- hardcore leaning to the way some of the passages hit and this is unmistakably american black metal. The song builds into a dark and stormy cloud.
"Cicatrix" serves as an interlude with its chorus of male and female vocals. The strings beneath it are fragile as glass. They song that follow is more atmospheric sludge, the vocals take on more of a lumber jack holler. The music remains dark and chilly like an overcast hovering over a forest. The shift tempos into an ethereal shuffle. This is a fourteen minute song, that I curse for being too long for my iPod. I'm sticking to songs 12 minutes and less. The drummer is killing it , though the collective efforts have talent dripping from every direction. The band lists themselves on their Facebook page as being blackened apocalyptic doom, going to show that you can not believe anything you read on Facebook, as I can hear the black metal but not the doom. Black metal is often labelled as being tied to romanticism, this is one of the first bands aside from Emperor than I can hear the connection. There is more yearning and transcendence than mourning which is the defining quality of doom, since the hesitance in the dynamic ebbs might be slow, I would not say thing on here is dirge like. So while their sound might be hard to define, that is one thing it is not.
I suppose the apocalyptic part is easier to hear since at times there sounds strikes me as tugging on some of the same sonic heart strings "Souls at Zero" era Neurosis kicks up. I"ll give this album a 9.5, since the rule of the iPod is stick to songs under twelve minutes. It is a beautiful album and if I ever decided that I wanted to bring back long sprawling epics to my iPod this would be one of the first albums I would throw on it. Now you can like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/abysmalhymns
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