A spot of French Doom, sir? Oooh, suits you. I don’t know too many French doom bands in all fairness, but it seems that Carcolh have a decent pedigree, being formed in Bordeaux and Saint-Nazaire back in February 2016. I missed their first outing, which was released back in 2018, “Rising Sons of Saturn”, but the accompanying press release from those lovely chaps over at Sleeping Church tell us that this is a band for folks who like Candlemass, Solitude Aeturnus and Crypt Sermon.

Gentle reader, I am such a folk. I absolutely love Candlemass. I even love their crapper albums. So, so-called “Carcolh”, you have a lot to do to impress me…

…and you know what? This six track slab of epic doom is pretty damned promising. “From Dark Ages They Came” is almost nine minutes of mono-riff bludgeoning. Oddly, the part of reference that kept coming up to me was fairly obscure British doom band Serenity, from the mid-90s. Why? Well, in most part because of the vocal sounds produced by singer Sebastien Fanton. He has a really clear, fairly traditional doom metal voice with a highish register, which works really well against the punchy bass work of Mathieu Vicens.

Elsewhere, the somewhat leaden tempo continues, but there’s also some hints of fuzzy hypnotic riffing too. “Works of Death” has a really mesmerising guitar sound, while “The Blind Goddess”, at ten minutes long, really wrings out the value from its snail-paced bashing. “When the Embers Light The Way” is perhaps the standout, being a fairly catchy almost mid-paced groovy slice of melancholia, before the sinister “Aftermath” appears – a sparse track of atmospheric sounds and mostly prominent vocals. The ridiculously leviathan rumble of “Sepulchre” rounds things off with a sense of gravity and seriousness.

Production wise, this has a really clear and expansive sound, with the vocals really standing out and giving the band a stand out feature. They may not be the most operatic vocals of all time, but they are at least memorable. At six weighty songs, this album doesn’t hang around longer than you’d like, but with pretty much all of the songs being closer to ten minutes than five, each track has space and time to breathe.

So, to two final questions. Is this for fans of Candlemass? Well, I didn’t find the reference to be particularly helpful, as aside from being a doom with a penchant for all things epic, there wasn’t a huge amount of similarity with the Swedish Gods there. The other question therefore is – is this actually any good? Well yes, yes it is. It’s a solid and fairly memorable doom album with enough character to stand on its own two feet. Good show all round.

(7/10 Chris Davison)

https://www.facebook.com/Carcolh

https://sleepingchurchrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-life-and-works-of-death