Slow "VI-Dantalion" <REVIEW>
“… about as on par as you would expect from a genre that moves slower than me after consuming 20 boxes of chicken wings.”
If you look closely at the clouds, there’s a face in there… maybe 2 or 3… or more. Slow is a 2 piece-metal band from Bruxelles, Belgium. Just a question, if you were to guess what their sound was like just based on the band name alone, what would you guess? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not speed metal. These guys are described on the Encyclopaedia Metallum as Funeral Doom, which anybody who’s at all familiar contains some of the slowest metal music around, hence the name. But these guys are said to also create a crushing atmosphere that “will crush your mesmerized soul to the deepest depths of nothingness.” Well with a description like that, I HAVE to check it out. So is that what we get on their 6th official full release that’s coming out tomorrow (Nov 8)? Well let’s not waste much more time, and let’s get straight into it.
Right when that opening track begins, you get a sense of the world built here. The haunting piano drone with a hush of wind filling the air around you with clouds of smoke to make you feel like you’re drowning, and is immediately elevated once the guitars and vocals kick in. Déhà’s vocal growls really do a number on you as you can’t tell if he’s actually a bass guitar, but that all comes together with the low chords from the guitars and the actual bass guitar. And THAT’s just the first track! Sprinkled in the background are some nice ambience built by synthetic strings and choirs to add to the environment created, especially since it’s not FUNERAL doom unless it sounds like you’re at a funeral.
Continuing onward throughout the album, we get a sense of the rest of what’s going on in the mix, which is where I can bring in our second band member Lore B., who’s responsible for the bass work as well as I’m guessing the lyric writing and concepts just based on their Facebook page’s about section. And yeah, she’s not half bad! Her musical chops are about as on par as you would expect from a genre that moves slower than me after consuming 20 boxes of chicken wings. Not to diss her or anything, like I said, for the genre in question, she does a good job. And that’s what I can say about this album in a nutshell, for the genre it’s pretty damn solid!
That being said… I think that sums up this album’s biggest flaw in my opinion. Really, it’s not a bad thing by any means, if you like slow, monstrous, gigantic funeral doom metal, then this is for sure your thing, I’d highly recommend this album to you. But here’s the thing… Slow’s music… is slow (People think I’m funny, I don’t get it), and slow music is not my thing most of the time, or at the very least, not an hours worth of slow. Give me a slow break section, or even a slow song, and I’ll be okay as long as there’s something else to bang my head to and tear shit up in the mosh pit… but give me an hour of music that doesn’t climb faster than -20bpm, and while a great atmosphere is created, musically I’m capped out.
Honestly, I’d find my experience with this album about the equivilant to working the night shift alone and having nothing to do. Yes, there can be a lot of good that can come out of that, but if nothing happens, then the clock doesn’t move any faster to the end of your shift. Then again, that can be said about Funeral Doom as a genre. I don’t mind it, and it can come out with great stuff, but all-in-all, it’s just not my thing. That being said, if you’re at all interested in taking a look at anything doom metal, or if you’re a long time fan of this band, then hell yeah! This album is an easy recommend. Even if you’re not the biggest doom metal fan, I’d say give one or two of these songs a try, just be careful when trying to bunker down and sit through the whole 1 hour and 19 minutes.
12/15
… because that’s how many beats per minute they would have to bump up from 5bpm before they leave the genre.
Check out SLOW
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