Death Cave : "Smoking Mountain"

If you want an example of what the difference is between sludge and doom, this band paints a clear picture. The guitar's chug forward with a great deal of drive. The vocals are an angry bark. This is aggressive not melancholy or mornful. It hamers you in an over manner devoid of atmosphere. On the second song they begin to evoke the things that make doom. More emotive melodic guitars . I can now hear why they stick to the more aggressive sound as being moody gives them too much room to wander off into guitar solos. The other thing that becomes very obvious is how much of a Crowbar influence this band has. The vocals mroe more throaty than sung. Sometimes going more into growls. I normally like doom more than sludge , but I think these guys do the sludge thing better.

"the Road" has some mean and powerful riffs, It finds the band back on the sludge side of the fence which is a better fit. This song will catch my ear for a few of the riffs , but doesn't keep me engaged. The rule here is 'cool riffs alone does not a good song make". Some of this is the fault of the vocals which now are just shouting for my attention, but like an annoying child you learn to block it out. They give into the death metal influence that that been bubbling under all this time on "the Seer". It acutally pays off since this is the best song since the opener. There have been moment through out but not consistent. Andrea from Holy Grove lends her voice to the song and gives it the shift of melody it needs.

They continue on the more aggressive side of heavy with "Poison Wizard". Neil from Black Breath is on this track. This is fitting because they are in the same sonic zip code as Black Breath here, over this album is not as heavy as those guys. I will give this album an 8. It is dark and aggressive for me, but not colored with enough moods for my personal listening. However metal heads just looking for heavy will find plenty to latch onto here.