SKEPTICISM “Companion”
By Octopi Mills
They have been at their Finnish brand of funeral doom for a long time and are returning with a new album set for September 24, by way of Svart Records. The epic organ lends a tide of sound to the music. "Calla" sounds like some old horn, iron and colossal, and true to the form and legacy. The sound is thick and lumbers and brawls, crawling as a kraken in the doomish foam. There is a silver lining, a sort of regal sound in the clouds that pulls away revealing a golden shine and it puts me in the mind of ancient thing and places and for some reason, the sea. The vocals sound like a giant or titan atop a mount, delivering a sermon.
The weight of the music is leaden, slow and brutish.."The March of the Four" plods heavily in this manner, all as iron and stone. There is a thick, stormy atmosphere throughout the album. "Passage" creates itself like a funnel cloud or dust storm, rising in terrible form like an insect swarm rises from the bastard farm as the clouds turn into the faces of old gods. The waves around the instrumentation are choppy and heavy, making the captain to have a devil to pay. The ancient sound must be noted, always here, always unique to the fold. "The Swan and the Rose" sounds, in title, like some sort of classic poem read over music by some disfigured giant or bear man lost in a romantic semblance of Gothic ruin and elegance, breaking pieces of stone and land off the coasts of antiquity and this says it all. Perhaps the doom album of many years.