Omnium Gatherum: New World Shadows

Holding their folk roots stubbornly: Doom metal with a lot of heart.

Another slowed-down Cannibal Corpse heard from, but from Finland, which always raises a “don’t write it off just yet” flag for me.

Finnish bands have a tendency to hold their folk roots stubbornly, thus post up a lot of compelling melody, and these guys are no different. In fact, often this is comparable to early Fields of Nephilim – there’s not much Neurosis/Cult of Luna-style bummer-ness to it, so I don’t mean a lot of washy chords and cursing of the gods – it’s doom metal to an extent but with a lot of heart to it, see.

Guitarist Markus Vanhala obviously puts a lot of time into the structures of not just the solos (which are great) and the riffing (ditto), but even the oldschool attempts at shtick are cool - in the title track he tosses out a clever hammer-on fractal van Halen might have used back in the day.

By Eric Saeger

Homepage: Omnium Gatherum
Homepage: Lifeforce Records