IRON VOID
IRON VOID “IV”
By Octopi MIlls
This is an album that has been anticipated in the doom circle. "Excalibur", I will say, is possibly my favorite doom metal album of all time, and I own both tape and LP versions. This one will be released on the same spread of formats as well. The themes on this album are sadly of a more modern type and opens up with "Grave Dance", a simple yet good song with the old feel that IRON VOID is known for. The sound on this album is heavy and smooth, having one of the best in the field for this sort of music. The simplicity of the songs are much more apparent this time and turns into to some feel good and big dumb things which SABBATH or PENTAGRAM could have been guilty of in their own respective times and manners.
"Blind Dead" is lumbering and stoner in its play, going somewhere in a circular place of like ends. The track "She" is more relaxed, going somewhere in a different direction than the rest, perhaps in the vein of TROUBLE. There isn't a lot going on in terms of the music or the lyrics outside of a very simple mindset with standard song titles- "Last Rites", "Pandora's Box", "Lords of the Wasteland", and there's a lot of messing about in the lower gears going on here. "Excalibur" has held a mystical and legendary sort of place for decades now and still to come but this doesn't seem to live up to that sort of mark by any means and the songs themselves come across as recreational. The contact high of SABBATH, VITUS, PENTAGRAM is there in the sound and the band comes across as the best of their times and but this also came across as a lazy sort of attempt to stay in the game.
They have the band performance down pat, the sound of a greatly recorded album, the self made style that is one of a kind in their field but the songwriting quality and the songs themselves are simply not there and especially on the grounds of their previous album. This all being said quite reluctantly, it will probably be the best doom album of the year anyway.