Mountain

When it comes to Sweden, normally one is thinking of powerful heavy metal or just the classical "elk's death", but here we are facing doom metal. Anguish - not to be mistaken for their equally-named compatriots from Katrineholm, who anyway broke up for a long time and released only one demo - are presenting "Mountain", their second album after the 2012 debut album "Through The Archdemon's Head". On this album one can hear traditional doom metal with catchy riffing, beautiful and dreamlike guitar melodies as well as strong hooklines. Untypically for this kind of music are instead the vocals that are not clean but reminding of death metal, although they are not as deep. As a reference, Chris Reifert (Autopsy) or Marc Grewe (Morgoth) come to my mind. In any case it reinforces to the album a more aggressive note. Often Anguish are playing their doom metal still a bit slower than their competitors in this genre, besides the album arrives very gloomy and also epical because of the variability as well as the length of the songs. Just when it comes to the soli, it gets a bit faster, and this does very good to the songs. Because of this, the 49 minutes playing time pass like clockwork and it never starts to get boring. Interestingly enough, lyrically the album handles with cosmic philosophy and gloomy fantasy themes. The album hardly offers approaches for criticism, because the Swedes just did it right. Of course, stylistically the songs look similar - within doom metal with its closer defined borders, it would be hardly possible in a different way. Nevertheless there are seven exciting and varied songs as well as an intro, songs that are coherent to each other, harmonious and authentic. The only drop of bitterness is that the album is not available as vinyl, at least it is not planned until now. Conclusion: Believers of classical doom metal who tend to epic and overcharged songs have to go for it! Perhaps some listeners have to get used to the vocals, but that is just a question of time. A really successful album! Lineup: J. Dee - Vocals David - Lead Guitar, Bass Christoffer - Guitar, Bass Rasmus - Drums