Rigor Sardonicous : "Praeparet Bellum"

 

This is the New York based band's first album in a decade. They play a very slow style of funeral doom. While the deliberate nature of what they do is impressive with it's sluggish darkness, the challenge is how are they at writing songs. The first song gets my attention with oppressive nature of what they do but I might need more in terms of dynamics and sonic colors. I admire their commitment to darkness. The vocals go lower and lower in their gurgle as the album progresses like he is more depressed with each passing song. By the time we get to the third song, the monochrome crunch is beginning to wear on me so I will see how I endure these next four songs. 

Longtime readers know I am a huge fan of the funeral doom genre. Evoken, Mournful Congregation and Esoteric are all some of my favorite bands, along with others who have evolved from the genre like Pallbearer and Ahab whose album I also recently reviewed. However, those bands are all skilled songwriters which is where I stand, no matter the genre the songs matter. You can take your time with the distorted funeral march, but it has to go somewhere. By the fourth song they begin to stagnant. Their sound while sinister as it may be can only drag this corpse so far. The drum machine is not holding them back as much as the monochrome formula they riff from.  In fact, I am surprised how well the drum machine does hold up, not sure what that says about the average doom drummer of this sort. 

They close the album with "Unholy Sonnet 10" . The vocals remain at a monster gurgle. Nothing changes in that regard. This song is nine minutes.and while it takes doom bands longer to get where they are going at this pace, that means they have nine minutes to get to anywhere aside from where they started and based off the bulk of this album, I do not have a great deal of faith that this is going to happen. It is not until six minutes in that something happens. The drums drop out and they allow the guitars to linger on some chords. The build could give a more dynamic pay off than it does. I will give this album a 6.5, as it does one thing well, which is not always in the best interest of their songs.