Aesthetic Death know what they're about as a label so any débutantes under their banner are worth a look. Details are a bit scant on Walk Through Fire, but their website says 'Hisingen Doom/Sludge' and the label says 'claustrophobic, oppressive, pernicious black sludge', so with that in mind...
I'm surprised I guess.
Opening with a simple, slow, repetitive, melancholic guitar notes over a steady rhythm, 'Furthest From Heaven' begins kind of like Isis tinkering with funeral doom before the Neurosis-slowed-to-a-crawl avalanche riff buries it and a rough edged, dry black metal howl hurls some bile into the mix. That repetitive melody returns to shadow the riff and plunge us into blackened funereal death/doom. It is highly percussive, too and yes that does somehow lend it a slowed down hardcore feel, particularly when the 'Neurosis crawling' sound is accentuated on 'Through Me They Bleed'. A feeling permeates that they may well have come from a more punk, maybe hardcore birthing but it is only faint. Atmosphere wise (and this style lives or dies on its atmosphere) the spite in the vocals and the feel of the riff puts it in doomy, slow, death company.
Any good? Well not bad, really. I struggle with this first half of the album to be honest: The simple structure and repeated motifs tend to push me away rather than mesmerise, trap and envelope me. It doesn't have the oppressive darkness or pure wrongness of a Khanate or the endless intensity of labelmates Esoteric or the hopeless journey of the best funeral doom. It seems angry, true: The vocals carry the harshness of the band's outpouring but it still defies my attempts to crawl inside or to roll with its waves. But for all that I don't dislike it too much either. Just exist with it.
The second half, however...
Flip it over (metaphorically speaking) and you have the pairing 'The Dying Sun' and 'The Dead Sun'. The former is a short but rich slow keyboard drone that recalls the fading light of a red giant star sliding away across a dead world, faint distorted hisses in the background like the last echoes of life. You are pulled in by the gravity before you are even aware it is there, a class worthy of early My Shameful or even Skepticism (no higher praise) but still with the feeling that it might have come from a different starting point. 'The Dead Sun' then takes you on the harsh, painful journey across this Night Land. This is still a percussive journey but the melody is now multi-layered and bleak and the riffs fall continuously like black drapes across the exit. It creates a harsh, unforgiving space that seems to contract around you until it is impossible to breathe and you too are snuffed out in the sound of an organ slowly expiring.
This is definitely more the bitter blackened end of Funeral Doom as though someone like Norrt got their fingers around its throat. Slow, monolithic, inevitable, inescapable.
A lot more like two EPs than an album, then; one of them so-so, but one of them is really rather excellent.
http://www.walkthroughfire.se
Gizmo
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