The brains behind this outfit is Dennis Cornelius of some 20 years standing within the doom genre and some notable appearances in Revelation and Place Of Skulls to name a couple of the more familiar band names. After the eerie and slightly disturbing intro of ‘Super Nova’ a fairly upbeat doom rock stance is adopted on ‘Nonprofundi’. The vocal style has a radio effect hollowness which works, though personally I prefer more depth to the vocal sound. Half way in and the track changes to Sabbath circa the ‘Masters Of Reality’ or even ‘Vol 4’ on the riff. The track ends with some very eerie space like keys that fade in and out and lead into ‘Is There Something There?’ which is slower and focussed towards Trouble. A very nice melody begins on ‘Heavens Vast’ after another synths segue ends the previous track and here the Trouble vibe continues, especially on the vocals, as my checklist of influences mentally ticks Pentagram as well.
As the album progresses you sense you’re being carried along with the melodies and sauntering pace with ‘Moment’ possessing a morose atmosphere, a quality haunting riff and a 70s style trippy ethos. ‘Melt Into’ is relatively upbeat after the creepy instrumental ‘Ostrakon’, with a catchy hook and some cracking drops in pace into acoustics. Once again the track ends with weird keys which offset the melancholia perfect by making each song more disturbing and sinister with it.
Noticeably there are very few leads used on this album as the band injects melody and hooks into each track creating a foreboding misery that is palpable at times. Occasionally I felt some of the songs were a little too similar to each other but overall it is difficult to fault a track like ‘The End Of Truth’ which is truly disturbing in a way that Sabbath’s ‘Megalomania’ song is from ‘Sabotage’.
If you want to immerse yourself in 70s trippy doom rock with a slight metal edge then this album is a sure fire winner as you’ll delight over its melancholic sadness.
http://www.myspace.com/memorydrivendoom
