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YOB occupy a genre that I quite enjoy, and I am always anxious to explore more bands in the world of doom. Although I prefer
the more symphonic side of doom, such as some My Dying Bride or Shape of Despair, I find that I enjoy some material that is
closer to the traditional side of doom.
This does not mean that YOB's latest offering is traditional doom with a good amount of melody inside of it, or even
has a melodic singer. YOB excels at making crushing, drawn out songs, and this is apparent merely by the fact that this album
only contains four songs, but is close to pushing the hour mark as a whole. This means that not only do you get mood and emotion
in the riffing, you get it in the progression of the riffing inside of the song structure. Then, by the time this disc stops
spinning, it feels like you have endured a long journey of emotion.
The vocals are not quite a guttural growl or an ear-piercing shriek, but fall somewhere in between, depending on what
is called for. There are times that the vocals break free of the other instrumentation, and reach out and smack you in the
face. At other times, particularly in the last song, there are more whispered vocals that blend in with the sonic landscape,
making you wonder if there are actual voices inside, or if it is the distortion of the guitars.
Overall, I found that on all my listens, I did not care for the vocals, but found that at the end, I quite enjoyed what
they did inside of the music. There seemed to be a lot of time taken in getting the right feel and mood inside of the songs.
Therefore, it is my ruling this album is not guilty of being bad metal. But, with that, I also decree that these men should
put as much creativity into their name, as they did for their music.
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