QAALM : " Resilience & Despair"

This California based doom band might be what you are looking for if you want something dark and droning that will not put you to sleep. The clean guitars that open the album are pristine. It is not until the low growled vocals come in that things get heavy. The guitars are layered so there is not just a crushing distortion hitting you in fact that is buried in the mix under the clean guitar until the dynamic begin to shift in a more metallic direction. Normally I would not tolerate an album that was comprised of only long sprawling songs all exceeding fourteen minutes. I was halfway into it when I notice this fact. With that said it must mean they are doing something right here. Could some of the drone be trimmed back? Sure but the mesmerism you are lulled into make it hard to notice. 

Going into the second song, the vocals set the mood with a more diabolical snarl . The music follows suit and is heavier metal than heavier sonically. This forces them to rely on the power of the chug rather than to lose you in sonic magic. This still proves to be effective, but also shares more common ground with what you might expect from your more run of the mill blackened doom band. As the song progresses it wanders off into more interesting melodic territory before getting heavy again. The vocals on "Cosmic Descent" take on a lower death metal growl. The music morphs behind this narrative to form more of a mournful funeral doom backdrop. The chug of guitar keeps things moving a little more than your average funeral doom band. 

The last song "Lurking Death" features sung vocals gliding in on the atmosphere that opens the song. It hovers here for the first three and a half minutes of the song before nastier tormented growls come in. It is not until the five minute mark that it converges into a more determined metal machine. Their sense of dynamics reaches it's most effective place around the 9 minute mark. That is also where a riff pops up that reminds me of Type O Negative. The song then wanders off to some interesting places. Overall while the sonic depth of the first song is not matched, the rest of the album is great doom with dynamic shade of gloom, I will give it an 9.