Signed to prominent Russian doom label Solitude Productions, Germany’s Ophis offer up five lumbering slabs of utterly miserable doom/death in the traditional vein with their second full-length ‘Withered Shades.’ The songs balance elongated passages of brooding and claustrophobic riffs, relentlessly chugging up-tempo sections and dimly-hopeful moments of melodic catharsis dragged across runtimes of anywhere between ten to sixteen minutes.
Opener ‘The Halls of Sorrow’ starts with a stark and despondent clean guitar-line that could easily be from Bethlehem’s ‘Dark Metal’ album before plunging into some crushing, wounded and lethargic riffs whose style and momentum remind very strongly of Irish doom band Mourning Beloveth’s trademark sound. This is contrasted with to a warmer, sorrowful, meandering melody tinged with a Celtic air that makes the resemblance seem even more explicit, as do the pained-sounding guttural growls that accompany the music throughout. Just as the song begins to establish itself as a slow-burner however, it gears up for a few moments before suddenly launching into a dirty, up-tempo and catchy-as-hell groove that ambushes the listener with its urgency, the song then doubling in speed again as a passage of rumbling death metal kicks in, pitting wrenching, melodic hooks against relentless, clattering drums and reminding more than a little of the heavier side of My Dying Bride in the process. This bridge collapses as quickly as it appears, to be replaced by the sound of distant winds, a persistent martial drumbeat and delicate, quietly reflective strains of clean guitar, whilst anguished, rasped bellows creep in to signal the imminent return of leaden doom. Said weighty riffs then dutifully return, immediately recapturing the momentum built up before the bridge and running with it, embarking on another winding, reflective little detour before faithfully coming back to the main underpinning lethargic riff and hammering it home repeatedly, by which point it becomes hard not to imagine Mourning Beloveth scrambling for the nearest phone to call their lawyer. Whilst at first glance might seem legitimate to throw accusations of plagiarism in Ophis’ direction however, closer inspection reveals a band who display an impressive grasp of pace and progression, not to mention tone, that is evidently backed up with no little amount of passion, with the songs on ‘Withered Shades’ regularly brimming over with intense and cathartic emotion as a result. With this in mind then, it’s probably fairer just to say that the band are keen to wear their influences on their sleeve and get back to enjoying the miserable riffs instead.
Second track ‘Suffering is a Virtue’ takes the album in a different direction, trudging along in the gutter to the accompaniment of sinking harmonised guitars before rising up with a rousing riff that strides forwards purposefully with renewed vigour to an eclectic quick-march beat, the song plateauing with a dissonant and grinding little melody punctuated by hammering drums and tormented screams hurled skywards before it plunges back down the other side of the slope again, the mournful dual guitars pulling downwards once more as the song slowly winds back down to a stop. As a composition it’s pretty simple and predictable, but also immensely effective, gearing up and back down again in a gratifyingly inexorable manner that pitches fatalism and resignation against brief moments of reckless hope in the way that good doom should.
As the album continues it becomes evident that there is good progression not just on each song but across the album as a whole, which seems to be slowly losing its inertia as it goes on. Third track ‘Earth Expired’ starts with a brief, up-tempo outburst but quickly settles into a monotonous, funeral-doom-like pace with deep growls suddenly drained of emotion, and whilst the song does slowly regain its momentum via some menacing-sounding, chugging riffs firmly in the My Dying Bride vein alternated with surging, up-tempo passages and moments of frenetic melody, the majority of the song is given over to a mixture of sombre and drawn-out clean guitars and crawling and increasingly colourless riffs. The sense of the album’s lifesblood draining away increases further with subsequent track ‘Necrotic Reflection’, which starts off feeling moribund and takes an age to breathe, the vocals feeling more lifeless and the riffs more flattened than before, the song taking on a more funereal and dissonant feel in places yet ultimately revealing faint glimmers of warmth with the momentum seeming much more hard-won now but for one brief galloping peak. The song progression reminds of Mourning Beloveth once again, but less blatantly so than before, and is in any case superbly done. By final track ‘Halo of Worms’, the vocals have degenerated into deep ethereal grunts and the riffs feel increasingly cavernous and monotonous, staggering on for a prolonged period in a directionless fashion before descending into one last murky, lurching riff loaded with malevolent finality and dread and accentuated by a few last dying clean notes before fading into nothingness.
Whilst ‘Withering Shades’ offers up nothing that is really new, it’s an immensely gratifying and atmospheric listen with considerable depth and consistently excellent presentation, from the fluid compositions to the powerful, nicely-balanced production to the accompanying album-booklet, which comes on shiny silver acetate paper adorned with monochrome images of tormented faces expertly realised in stark oils. Whist it might display a persistent tendency to imitate others, ‘Withered Shades’ remains a commanding and intense listen that balances a masterful use of momentum with a murky, sepulchral atmosphere and plenty of raw emotion, ultimately culminating in an underground gem of an album despite its flaws.
http://www.ophisdoom.de/
http://www.myspace.com/ophisdoom
