4.0 out of 5 stars
Very Tasty Funeral Doom, November 7, 2009
This review is from: Burden of Grief (Audio CD)
I really really like doom metal, particularly traditional doom metal (Candlemass, Trouble) and death/doom (November's Doom, Paramaecium, The Gathering) and 11th Hour combines both subgenres into a disc that will devastate your senses.
One issue that I've often had with funeral doom is that it lingers on chords too long. Now I'm all for atmospherics but this is 2009, and attention spans aren't what they used to be. This is where 11th Hour comes in. Yes they've got enough funeral dirge to depress even the Powerpuff Girls but the riffs have a bit of groove and hook that keeps things skipping along without getting too dreary or too bouncy. This is the influence of traditional doom, and it's most welcome.
The growled vocals are very growly, but the clean vocals lack the power and/or melancholy that this music requires, and this is my only real complain with this release. I'm not looking for Rob Lowe part 2 but well-done clean doom vocals are a rarity and in my opinion, this disc misses the mark. Thankfully the clean vocals are less than half of the vocal work on "Burden of Grief" and the deliriously doomy riffage more than compensates. I'm serious, this is doom the way it should be, no bells, no whistles, just end-of-the-world-city-flattening doom metal delight. Perhaps it's been done better somewhere else but for the moment, this is what I'm spinning.
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