Doom is perhaps one of the main genres that I should love but am very hit or miss with. I totally get it, especially the occult appeal, I love that. In fact, one of my favourite releases of the last five years has to be Green Lung’s Woodland Rites (literally insane you should check it out) if I could go back in time it would have been my number one album of 2019 it’s grown on me over time to the point of obsession. Anyway, enough of that I also love Coven, Church Of The Cosmic Skull, Ghost and Lucifer, the black mass calls to me! So why don’t I listen to more Doom?

To give me a Doom fix today is 1782. This Italian trio piece promise big Stoner/ Doom vibes and I’m totally fine with that, especially so when on a label like Heavy Psych Sounds. Having formed in 2018 the bands rise has been swift with a debut self-titled full length dropping in 2019! Now in 2021 the band aim to follow this up with From The Graveyard. So, don your black robes, hail Satan and let us descend into the bowels of hell!

Evocationis is atypical, eerie, but also fitting. It flows well into The Chosen One. This track introduces big Doom riffs, chunky, heavy and slow. The vocals are somewhere between clean and harsh, I’m not entirely convinced that I like them but there’s no doubt that they suit the music. Bloodline keeps the riffs coming, it’s memorable but like a lot of Doom it rests on those riffs far too much. It’s good music to put on whilst you’re relaxing though it must be said. I’m a huge advocate of ‘background music’ although that term sounds derogatory I mean it with no offence. Black Void has more feedback and for lack of a better expression a slightly rawer edge to it, this suits 1782 perfectly and it’s by this point in the record that my enjoyment begins to pique. I love the introduction of keyboards into this songs end, it’s a trait that should be employed more by the band.

Inferno kind of feels like the start of a new album which in some sense I can understand after the blistering Black Void. However, I would rather have had the album build upon the awesomeness of Black Void than slip back into fairly generic Doom. Priestess Of Death does little to improve on this and again whilst Hook heavy it’s nothing any fan of Doom hasn’t heard before. Seven Priests carries on with these existing themes, chock full of the kind of riffs that make you go ‘damn, that’s catchy’ but after the song is over you can’t remember it. Final track, the instrumental In Requiem might exhibit similar traits but one thing I do admire about it is the instrumental touch, I actually prefer this to the addition of vocals, a strong end to an otherwise mixed album.

Those are the two words to bear in mind ‘mixed album’. I don’t loathe any of it, and at points I love it, but overall it gets a solid ‘good’ from me. Would I advise people to rush out and listen to 1782, probably not, but I also wouldn’t discourage it. For the more initiated Doom fanatic this’ll probably tick a lot of boxes. For someone like me though it just shows promise, I can hear some really killer ideas in this album and I can see the direction the band want to take. It might just take a bit more work and a third album.

(7/10 George Caley)

https://www.facebook.com/1782doom

https://heavypsychsoundsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/1782-from-the-graveyard