#264 Pentagram - Review Your Choices

Well. This is the last one for doom-metal month. In the coming days, it's back to metal of all tempos, all persuasions, and all sub-genres. For the last review of the month, here's something from a very, very old-school band.

Black Sabbath formed in 1969. Pentagram formed in 1971. Take a moment to think about that, because that's not much of a gap. As such, Pentagram are widely hailed as one of the foremost doom metal acts. The key difference between Pentagram and Sabbath, of course, is that Pentagram didn't release an album until 1985, and in general, have had a fairly chaotic and mildly confusing career, to say the least - I certainly can't claim to have any idea, despite trying very hard to do some research beforehand. Today, I'm looking at one of the bands 90's albums - 1999's "Review your Choices".

Pentagram's sound really comes from the oldest classroom in the old-school of doom - from when the music wasn't so far distanced from rock n' roll, and when slow-tempos weren't so emphasised, but instead just seemed to happen. Review Your Choices, while a record almost of this century, certainly sounds akin to something which wouldn't be so very out of place in the late-seventies or early eighties. The music is very Sabbath-like, perhaps with a little of the whimsical giddiness of Jethro Tull, particularly in the title-track, which has a jumpy enthusiasm, but also a dark air of warning - as the lyrics suggest, "there's a man with a pitchfork around the bend". In what could be considered poignant, that really feels like what doom metal, in the Black Sabbath tradition, does. It looks you in the eye, and tells you to watch out, because the world is a nasty place, filled with nasty things, and then it makes songs about them. Review your Choices certainly holds this true, as an album - it's dark, sardonic and more than a little pessimistic - a truly archetypal album of its genre. The combination of the guitar and bass tone is strikingly dark and brooding, enveloping the other instruments, and creating a mix which is a little bit chaotic, with everything perhaps slightly disconcerting in terms of where they are in the mix - the vocals sometimes echoing through, and at other times muffled - In the end, however, the production suits the reeling music rather well.

There are parts of Review Your Choices which are sufficiently fuzzy and bass-driven to render them genuinely claustrophobic, which in my experience, usually isn't something which early doom metal did very much, the occasional eerie, self-titled Black Sabbath song excluded. The tone of such music was undeniably very heavy a lot of the time, but it never quite seemed to have the speaker-wrenching properties of more modern stoner doom and it's neighbour-disturbing associates. Review Your Choices, in this respect, feels like it's taken influence from the fuzzy, crushing material which was very much existent within the doom-metal world by the time in the late nineties that it came to be written. Fuzzy, crushing material which, interestingly, was probably influenced by bands like Pentagram in the first place - perhaps the album is an example of real reciprocal synergy of influence within a genre. Whatever the truth of the matter, the album is deceptively heavy - it was only about half way through it that I realised just how much it was making my brain-cells vibrate. The guitar roars, and the bass-drum sounds like thunder, but at the same time, the music isn't devoid of subtly, with enjoyable wailing lead-work and the occasional embellishment, rendering the album a good, old fashioned "riffs, drums n' vocals piece" but one which is not without a dynamic and interesting edge, travelling between eerie beauty, disconcerting sections, and warm, mind-altering riff-work which really is up there in the league of Electric Wizard, or any respectable stoner-doom band, in terms of sheer wide-eyed brain-rattling rumble.

There are doom albums, and there are doom albums. Review Your Choices really feels like a fantastic specimen of the genre. Pentagram may have had an odd, rather non-linear career, but albums like this one serve as a real testament to the fact that that they are a band who will leave a hefty legacy. It's been a pleasure reviewing only doom metal for a whole month, and this feels like a fitting end to it.

This is a 9/10 album.

Links:
Pentagram on Facebook
Pentagram on Metal Archives

The next review won't be doom. Maybe the non-doom fans in my infinitesimally small readership will return soon...

#263 Solitude Aeturnus - Beyond the Crimson Horizon

One day, whilst trawling through bands fairly randomly, I happened upon epic-doom veterans Solitude Aeturnus, entirely by accident. I'm not sure how I'd not discovered them before, as they were certainly the sort of thing I was, and absolutely still am very into, when it comes to doom metal. Epic doom, I'll hazard, is actually the first taste of doom metal I had - the other varieties came later to me, and, before this month of doom runs out, in a few days time, I thought I'd stick another epic-doom review in somewhere. As it happens, that somewhere is today.

Beyond the Crimson Horizon is Solitude Aeturnus' second album. If I was asked to put a date on this album without first knowing, I'm not sure if I could. Not only that, but I'm not sure if It sounds older or newer than it is. Ultimately, I think that bodes well for it - it's organic, no-nonsense charm carries a vibe of the eighties with it, but at the same time, it has that certain something of later times on board too. In fact, the album was released in 1992, and, I think it can be safely said, is the sort of album which the nineties really needed. Like its artwork, the album feels warm, perhaps even a little dusty - the dust of the red desert sunset, however, , and not the dust of disuse. Beyond the Crimson Horizon really feels like an album which brings together the accomplishments which metal had already under its belt at the time, and the influences audible in the record are overtly diverse. While consistently mid-tempo, the record manages to bring groove-laden riffs, very traditional, perhaps even speed-metal style vocals, and the occasional distinct triplet which wouldn't be unwelcome in eighties-thrash, and unite them under the unmistakable marching, thumping swagger of the kinds of epic doom which bands like Altar of Oblivion are playing now...  demonstrating my innate ability to discover metal bands the wrong way round, starting on the inspired, and moving back in time towards the inspiring. Albums like this, it seems to me, are inspiring in more ways than one - it's certainly refreshing to see that non-extreme metal was covering some ground in the nineties, dispelling perhaps, the decades ruinous reputation.

One of the characteristics of epic-doom which this album is practically a textbook example of is the fact that, for a decent chunk of it's running time, it's not all that doomy - a lot of the time, the tempo is high enough to render it traditional metal that's stuck in a traffic jam. At the same time, however, as with bands like Solstice there is still, no matter how close to traditional-metal it strays, something which anchors it in doom - and at times, it's not necessarily the tempo that does this. There's just enough murk, thickness and epic emphasis on chords to keep the record in the doom-sphere, demonstrating, perhaps unintuitively, that tempo is not everything when it comes to a genre which is by default slow. Two things which this album really goes to town with are the vocals, and the synergy between instruments. The vocals are, from the onset, impressive; grandiose, but not pretentious or cheesy, in the way power metal vocals might be. The vocal hooks are both memorable and powerful, without being over the top in a way as to shatter the very honest and earthy atmosphere which the album possesses. Beyond the Crimson Horizon is, it must be said, one of those albums which really reconciles being down-to-earth with being immensely epic and powerful - the sort of album which isn't insistent, but will blow your socks off it you let it. Secondly, the assembly of the parts into the whole is really something to behold. The album reminds me of those ancient blocks of stone from Latin America, which are so tightly slotted together that you can't fit a razor-blade between them. The guitar and drums are very exact, resulting in incredibly percussive and solid sound, with the chords and the drum-beats without fail manage to take off at exactly the same time.

Solitude Aeturnus is a band I'm rather shocked to have taken just so long to discover, especially considering that albums like Beyond the Crimson Horizon very much tick the majority of the boxes for what I enjoy in epic doom, and beyond that, music in general.

A fantastic record - 10/10.

Links:
Solitude Aeturnus on Facebook
Solitude Aeturnus on Metal Archives

#262 The Wandering Midget - From the Meadows of Opium Dreams

As this month of doom ploughs on, and it continues to rain, snow and be generally grey, I'm sometimes glad I can call upon colourful doom metal like this - The Wandering Midget...

Sometimes the name a band decide to give themselves can draw you in before you've heard a single one of their songs. A few weeks ago, I discovered a band which fitted that description exactly. With a name like "The Wandering Midget", I had to investigate this Finnish doom-metal outfit from the moment I heard of them, and having listened to this record a few times now, I feel it's about time to review it. "From the Meadows of Opium Dreams" is the bands second full-length album and is probably one of the most purple albums in my music collection.

Four track doom records are something I've seen quite a bit of recently and From the Meadows of Opium Dreams is no exception - It gives the record a feeling of compactness, but on the other hand, also scale - The presence of any twenty-minute long tracks, of which this record has one, will always give an album a monolithic presence, and predictably, From the Meadows of Opium Dreams carries such a presence; when the album is talking, you listen. The album is, most strikingly, a real textbook example of a band making something grandiose without having to appeal to, and rely upon, embellishments to their musical recipe - A power-trio, but one which manages to sound far vaster than just three musicians. The depth and magnitude of the music on the record certainly belies the small assortment of instruments involved - merely guitar, bass, vocals, drums and a couple of effects here and there, manages to conjure something which really does sound dream-like and immense. The vocals, especially, are extremely powerful, a cross between very refined, almost classical baritone, and Saruman the White, which, I assure you, is as powerful and atmospheric as it sounds. Like a few of the bands I've looked at this month, The Wandering Midget seem to be a band with whom vocals are a real cherry on top, carrying what is already good doom to a whole new level, with soaring vocal lines which are memorable from the first listen - always, in my book, a definite plus.

Cruising below the soaring vocals are the riffs, which are certainly the second highlight of the album - the riffs tend to really feel like they're carrying a hefty atmosphere, with each chord really elevating the music, building up. Juxtaposed with this, the band also do a great job of subdued, mellow, and contemplative passages, which often last for minutes on end, really making use of individual notes and taking as much from their relative emptiness as what their content manifests itself as. The songs in general make full use of their running-time to build up and then crescendo enjoyably, whilst exploring plentiful stages along their journey - Songs like Temples in the Sky really feel like epics, whilst at the same time remaining close to the winning doom-formula, and staying refreshingly far away from pretentiousness or over-the-top-cheesiness - the record feels very organic and straight-forward, and the songs carry a sense of being crafted carefully and thoughtfully, yielding something which has been nicely, solidly made. In this respect, while the album perhaps doesn't invent anything wildly new to doom as a genre, it makes a solid opus of what is enjoyable about the genre already - granted, a band could have made this album fifteen years ago, but I'll always appeal to the fact that regardless of whether you think bands have made albums of this style before, by the truckload even, the fact is that that doesn't compromise the inherent quality of this album in particular - and as far as I'm concerned, it's an extremely enjoyable record.

As I've tried to illustrate for most of this review, From the Meadows of Opium Dreams is ultimately a very pleasingly solid record, and one which should appeal to most, if not all, fans of doom metal. It's certainly one which I've had a great time listening to, and one which really feels whole and complete.

This is an 8/10, I think.

Links:
The Wandering Midget on Facebook
The Wandering Midget on Metal Archives

I have no idea what I'm going to review next... keep tuned.