Ahab : "the Coral Tombs"

8 years of chaos have passed since this German doom band released their last album. Chris Noir of  Ultha lends his voice to the highly aggressive black metal start of the opening track before it ebbs down into the doom you expect from this band. The croon of the baritone vocals here, is delivered with more power and presented more forward in the mix. The vocals play a bigger role in the overall sound this time around. "Colossus of the Liquid Graves" is more of a doom song, with little in the way of surprises. The more conventional presentation of the vocals creates a more Opeth or Enslaved like sound in the good cop / bad cop call and response. The growls are lower and more guttural, what you expect from funeral doom, though the album lumbers with more drive in the band's step.  

"Mobilis Mobili" carries a dissonant grit to how the guitars dig into things. There are eerie clean passages that add atmosphere to darken things up, it is really a great snapshot of what I want doom to sound like in 2023. This album is really well produced and worth the eight years wait as they put a great deal of attention to detail in all the sounds presented. The vocals are wonderfully harmonized and layered at the end of the song. There is a wonderfully hypnotic drone leading into "the Sea as a Desert". The gurgle of the vocals adds menace to the more psychedelic swirl they lead you into. Sung vocals follow this. This eventually leads to an even more melodic turn as they sail out into the atmosphere by the end of the song. 

The title track they allow the lingering space to creep between each note as common in funeral doom, though with a post-rock feel to the execution. There is some stellar guitar work on this album and this song highlights this fact. It's a display of how melody and mood do not have to be excluded when using growled vocals. The song simmers on still waters so the guitar embellishment steer the course until the sung vocals come in, though even they muse idly. They are more like a doom dazed Opeth when the song builds. The song after this is the album's longest at over twelve minutes which given the genre is fairly conservative.  It makes me happy when a band manages to be both more melodic and heavier than their previous album, which is what unfolds here. The last song has the singer from Esoteric lending a growl. The main vocal is a mournfully sung wail. I will give this album a 9.5, and see how it grows on me , more of a record to leave on and let play in the afternoons rather than something I am going to ride around town listening to, but an amazing album all the same.