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.     

Cvlt Nation Sessions : Bathory's s/t Debut

Once again my other blog family Cvlt Nation is releasing a tribute album to offer a different look at an old classic, this time around it's the self titled debut from Bathory .  As you might guess I am going to continue to review these with an impartial ear. To be honest, while I appreciate the historic nature of this album, the first album from Bathory is not  my favorite it's too close to punk and the production sucks. This is what makes it appeal to punks crossing over into metal. For my money Bathory did not get good until Quorthon who originally got his start in an oi! band started getting more metal and breaking out the epic Viking hymns on "Hammerheart" . In fact it had been so long since I listened to the first Bathory album that I went and pulled it up so I could do an a/b these songs against the originals. These bands have better production value than what was going on when this album originally recorded. Grave Coven gives "Hades" more of a death metal touch. You are still reminded to how similar Bathory and early Slayer are in my respects. There are still hints of early thrash in the original version of the "Reaper", Plagues clearly comes from more of a grinding hard core back ground gives "Reaper' a little rougher beating.

 One case where the original version is improved upon would be True Love's take on "Necromansy" which is slowed to achieve something that is darker and feels more sinister than the original. Expander and Worsen offer pretty straight forward versions of the more feral songs "Sacrifice" and "In Conspiracy with Satan" to remind us of black metal's thrash roots. After True Love the next best performance might be Morast's slaying of "Armageddon". It's very deliberate and powerful. Ultha goes full blasty mcnasty on "Raise the Dead", if this was an original it might not be half bad , but it takes some of charm out of the chorus at this pace. Things stay raw and nasty for Fever Nest's version of "War'.  While this is rawer than some of the other songs, the production value is overall pretty solid on all of these songs. Bathory fans will find this a worthwhile listen and a free downloaded version is available on Cvlt Nation's Bandcamp page. I'll give this an 8.5. Which might be a tad higher than what I would rate the original version.