November is Doom - Indigo Raven- "Looking For Transcendence"

When the in-box is full of sounds I am not looking for like say with a month devoted to doom, I turn else where. This time clicking through doom titles on a torrent site I frequent. What caught my eyes was a band name not your typical metal trope, and the fact they were from France, a country with a good track record for metal. Boom am I good or what because this album surprised the hell out of me. They pound into the chords more like sludge at times as there is not a great deal of Sabbath worship. But the mood is more atmosphere and doomy. Female vocals doing their own thing and not trying to be Coven haunt the songs. Are there some Diamanda Galas moments mixed in this the more gothy stylings of her voice. Yes, but that is a rarer bird to find in the wild so I will take it. 

They color what would be slow pounding metallic sounds with flourishes of  melodies layered in various electronics. The second song finds a more expansive range of sound throbbing forward in a hypnotic fashion. They lean into the heavier side of their dynamic with the crushing crunch of "Small Hearted & and Blind", The vocals become more of a texture than a melody that the song hinges upon. Even when everything drops out but her voice. The pace picks up to varying degrees here as well.  I had to listen to "White Knight Syndrome' a couple of times for it to fully sink in. The pulse of the song thanks to the drums , has more in common with Led Zeppelin than Sabbath, though the walls of riffs are pretty staggering and sonically immense. I like how the vocals fall around the riffs on this one.  

"Night Shade Winds" is darker and denser to some degree, though not as melodic in the more opaque musings,  her vocals typically taking on a more spoken tone. Then things take an exotic almost  Dead Can Dance tone for the last song, that works off her heavily layered vocals to sing in a round. Not what I was expecting, but over all this album runs best when they do not play by the normal metal rules, metal often become a color uses at their convivence . I will give this album a 9, it is one of the years strongest doom releases for sure, might not be a perfect album, but it works well when they lock in.