Forget your silly pirate metal; this is proper grown up seafaring stuff for true nautical explorers. Now I loved the debut album by Ahab, the German crew who also play in other projects such as Midnattsol, Penetralia and Mystic Circle. ‘The Call Of The Wretched Sea’ took us on voyages across storm laden waters and submerged us deep under the depths of the ocean in a musical tribute to Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick. Hell it even drenched us in the atmosphere of the movie by sampling John Huston’s movie adaptation and left us clinging to the rigging as the funeral doom washed over us tossing the ship from side to side like a child’s toy. Needless to say the album took its place at number 6 in my top 10 of 2006 and so I was really looking forward to the new one ‘The Divinity Of Oceans.’
First thing that struck was an advance look at the album artwork which I immediately recognised as being the same used by The Pogues on their renowned album Rum Sodomy And The Lash 1985 namely Théodore Géricault "Le Radeau De La Méduse." The Pogues were always a jolly bunch of drunken brigands however so similarities end there as Ahab are as miserable as a wet weekend in Whitby (keeping with sea theme). Again we have 7 songs clocking in at a massive 67 minutes, opener ‘Yet Another Raft Of The Medusa (Pollards Weakness)’ with a slow torturous instrumental pace and craggy sea- captain gruff vocals takes us off over windswept bleak terrain. However this is not quite as claustrophobic as the former album which left you feeling submerged, plunged into icy water and struggling to stay afloat on the brink of drowning, as the sea unmercifully worked you over. This is airier in places with lucid moments of calm and clean vocals being employed a lot more too. By comparison I felt the vibe of this was one of being shipwrecked, safe to some extent on a raft with endless open water stretching as far as the eye can see.
The watery vibe of the debut is not quite as atmospherically pronounced here and the music itself strikes as more concentrated and I find this a bit of a shame as this doesn’t have quite such a magical imaginative feel to it. The title track has a long gentle passage of subtle melodies and clean singing which is quite different than anything we have heard from the band on the debut. It has taken a while to work for me and I am still not completely convinced by it, still groups must evolve and mature and this is no doubt all part of that process. If anything these ideas are emphasized as we flow (intentional that) into ‘O Father Sea’ and I am at times reminded a bit of Yorkshire doomsayers The Prophecy here.
‘Tombstone Carousel’ is a great title and the drumming here is thunderous as it backs the growling vocals, sounding as though they have been disturbed from the depths by the barrage of noise. I absolutely love the glistening, shimmering melody that the song gently ebbs into, it is certainly consistent with that feeling of stranded abandonment with the sun beating down and a throat parched, surrounded by all that water and unable to drink a drop. This is epic stuff in every sense of the word and is not for the likes of those screamers waving plastic cutlasses at the front of the stage of certain label-mates who they couldn’t be more different from (and if someone suggests the two bands tour together they should immediately be sacked.). At the moment this isn’t in the running for my top 10 but it could yet grow on me just like barnacles on the hull of a ship.
http://www.myspace.com/ahabdoom
