After waves of death and thrash bands bashing against my ears, I finally come across a band with a different aspect. What do Anguish play? Do they play prog, or perhaps black metal? No. Anguish play some brilliant doom metal, in the same vein as their forefathers Sain Vitus, Cathedroll and Candlemass. This is a great piece of doom metal metal that can only be found at seldom since other exremists usually prefer taking faster roads. But Anguish have even topped that, and twisted their wonderful album and combined it wit tiny aspects of their own. While this is no crushing effort it has a great twist of originality and complimental influences spread out as fragments all around the album.
This magnificent piece of album attains a great death/doom feel only prevaelnt in the riffs and in a small amount. It grabs hold of the listener and suffocates in bitter sorrow and kin, thus pulling the listener into the debths of a rotting graveyard, effective enough to smother the listeners ears in sorrow filled blood. The album almost feels as if it has a gothic feel to it and at times one cannot avoid the hate and misery that applies on itself. The songs are outrageously long, but simply keep you perplexed and fascinated the whole way through. I for one am a sucker for old school death/doom and for some reason this album is a clear reminiscent of Cianide, Autopsy and such. There is obviously no death metal influence but one clear aspect of the album is that it's heavier and darker than the aformentioned forefathers of doom. And at times you may even have a sense of epicness mixed with callousness. Especially during the passages in the song ''Dawn of Doom'', which is the second longest track on the album, the album rises into a curageous atmosphere and then suddenly descends into a furious riff that when accompanied by the vocals, sounds almost like death metal. Such transitions are rare and are often found in seperate fragments in different sections of the album. However, when the two come across, the album reaches its absolute climax.
One great aspect about the record is that it's able calm you soul in way of ululation, much like typical doom bands. The album achieves epicness and bitterness with its avengeful anger and misey-laden atmosphere, and after that point the whole album is practically ear candy. The album scarcely alternates tempowise, since most of the riffs are quite obviously slow. When the album tends to change into a faster tempo, things can be pretty entertaining with more stomping riffs while still sticking to the dismal metal furmula that carries vital importance. The biggest gap in the album is that they don't tend to change their tempos and beats to often and a little more variation would have been better, especially since the album is nearly an hour long and needs some good music to kkep the listener entertained all the way throught. Fortunetely, the positive side of the album already wipes away most of these negative aspects to you still get a very solid effort. The drums beats vary slightly withing their own terms but still manage to create wonderful beats to sufficiently aid the doomy riffs. The guitar riffs alternate between more rotting, chord-driven riffs which is the main structure of the album and more melodious and simultenous guitar harmonies executed assidiously and tinge with a glimpse of goth and a hint of black.
With instrumental department complete, the only thing left is the vocals which are by the way superb. They have a slightly blackish feel to them abit like the riffs and sound as if Quorthon joined early Tiamat in terms of vocal delivery. Duing the the more angry moments of the album, the vocals do the same thing as the guitars to sychronize with them. Again, during the ferocious burst in ''Dawn of Doom'', the vocals, for only a few seconds become outrageous death metal vocals barking with ferocity. And once the vocals are embarked on the rest of the album, you have an amazing doom metal album, with slightly different twists than their forefathers, yet being able to capture just as much attention. For the residue of ''Through The Archdemon's Head'' are two ears bleeding in misery, rotting of old school doom metal.
Higlights:
Dawn Of Doom
Book Of Fox
The Veil
Rating: 88%
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