With cover art featuring a joyously glowing daisy, you’d be forgiven for thinking this album was some kind of hippie chillout extravaganza had it not been for the fact you are currently perusing Ave Noctum. Of course, reality is far from that – this is the 2nd full length album from Danes Woebegone Obscured, having taken the best part of 6 years to follow up from their debut. Taking their time is clearly ingrained in their very spirit, as it seems like to tackle everything in a slow and agonisingly drawn out manner (in a good way). The five tracks that make up this album clock in just shy of 80 minutes of funeral dirge hell/heaven (depending on your persuasion).
Dissonant chords crash into each other, shimmering and echoing like oceanic turmoil, clean and harsh vocals share the limelight, with massive melodies shining through the ringing discordant turbulence, shuddering and billowing like giant lungs sighing forth a death rattle. There’s a lot to like here, and at times I’m reminded of some of the true greats of the scene in their soundscapes. Continually allowing a seemingly never-ending expanse of depth and space in their sound adds to their bleakness, slowly flattening you in an anaconda-like grip of depression. However, it’s not all plain sailing. The clean vocals sound a bit weak from time to time and are often overused in my opinion. Also, a couple of the tracks seem to lose their way around the halfway point, before returning to the sonic drudgery that started them off so well. It is little niggles like this which can turn a great album into an average one, and I’m afraid that for me, this is what has happened here.
The label blurb mentions Woebegone Obscured in the same sentence as Evoken and Thergothon. Sure, those are easy comparisons to make. However, Woebegone Obscured aren’t on the same sort of planet as those two monoliths of the genre. Those guys measure on the Richter scale of subsonic crush, whereas these Danes are still in the embryonic stages of knowing how to attack your listener with slow, creeping death/doom. Sure there are many signs of greatness here, but ‘Marrow of Dreams’ doesn’t quite have the nuance and judgment to quite tip you over the edge. Yet. I will be watching their progress very closely from now on however. Not bad at all, but not quite the finished product I think the band were hoping to achieve.
(6.5/10 Lars Christiansen)
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