Month: August 2014

John Gallow – Violet Dreams (Review)

John GallowJohn Gallow is from the US and this is an album of Doom Metal.

This is a Doom Metal album that’s full of Doom and has lots of Doom Metal in it. The Doom is strong and the Doom is heavy, with lots of Doom Metal making an appearance and a liberal Doom sprinkling of Doom on the Doom side.

This Doom album is of the Traditional Doom variety with Classic Doom and Old-School Doom also being represented. Black Doom Sabbath are a good Doom starting point as well as other Doom members of the Doom pantheon used as Doom influences.

Doom. Doom. Doom.

Okay, enough of that. You get the idea.

There is just over an hour of music on this album and it’s a pleasure to listen to. The man has a powerful voice and the music has a good amount of variation and interest to it.

The riffs are good, the melodies bold and memorable and the production punchy and crisp. The songs are well-written and there are plenty of interludes, solos, leads, keys, effects and even bass shenanigans to keep the listener enthralled.

John Gallow has produced an album that manages to encapsulate all of what it means to be Traditional Doom Metal whilst managing to actually sound current and relevant at the same time. It may be resolutely Old-School in source material but this is an album that can stand proud in the 21st century as a exemplar of how this kind of music should sound.

Hail!

Inexorable – Morte Sola (Review)

InexorableThis is the latest EP from German Technical Death Metal band Inexorable.

It starts with Doom. First track, Praeludium Mortis, is 2:39 of slow, agonising crawling through broken glass and razor shards. It sets the scene perfectly for Inexorable’s brand of impenetrable Black Metal-tinged assault.

This is no normal Death Metal. This is for fans of Gorguts, Portal, Mayhem, Axis of Perdition, etc. – bands that are interested in pushing the boundaries of traditional genre restrictions and will do so in their own way. If Mayhem went Death Metal, Inexorable might be what they sounded like.

The riffs congeal together to produce dark, murky feelings and the guitar lines almost seem alive with malignant presence.

Vocals are kind of an ethereal growl that reside half in our reality and half in some other, twisted dimension; or sometimes a plaintive semi-clean sung from the depths of a churning abyss. Either way they are not the standard for this kind of music, with the semi-cleans in particular coming across strongly.

The songs, and the EP in general, is a holistic experience; a nightmare reality to visit but hopefully to escape from at the end. Sometimes bands which attempt music like this can come across as unfocused or messy, but I’m pleased to say this is not the case with Inexorable.

Throughout all of the evil, grim sounds and communing with other realities is a firm foundation in, (atypical), Death Metal. This serves them well and keeps them grounded whereas they might otherwise carried away by the dark and lost to us forever.

This is not music for the weak hearted. If you can stomach it, however, there are some evil delights to be had here.

Very highly recommended.