Hell - Hell

Combining the vacuous devilish scream echoes of depressive black metal projects such as Xasthur with somewhat lo-fi doom metal has certainly made for an interesting mix on the Oregon band’s self-titled release, and getting past its being much less heavy than the likes of Leviathan, from whom they seem to draw great influence, this album is certainly able to flex its merits beyond its stylistic uniqueness with a variety of angles at which it approaches the suicidal side of doom metal and black metal. There are influences of drone metal from the likes of Sunn O))) sprinkled throughout, along with some semi-harsh noise that adds a helpful layer of thickness over the doom metal marches. It does suffer from a bit of drag in the moments when it’s not constantly bringing something new to the table like on the simplistic Sabbath-y one-note riffing of “Inscriptus”. But overall, its an album as hellish as its name suggests and it accomplishes its abysmal experience without leaning too heavily on excessive distortion of guitars or bass or even on the legion-possessed screams covering the record. This is probably another one of my favorites this year.