What do we have here? Music to go with the newest craze that is The Last of Us? The cover depicting a person turned fungi? The band name the moniker of the creature? Nope, wrong. But still connected. In what way? Well, just like that show warmed up a familiar post-apocalyptic setting and used story elements we know from other shows, the project at hand engaged in some rewarming as well, albeit of their own material.

YAAROTH is a doom/folk/progressive rock project masterminded by Dan Bell, a singer, guitarist and composer from Rochester, NY. The Man in the Wood is the project’s debut album. What’s confusing though is that the same project used to be called Yarrow and as such released an EP as far back as 2015 titled The Subterranean Stench (see Encyclopaedia Metallum) which contained three of the five tracks to be found on the “new” album. Actually, The Man in the Wood contains only one new track, since the album opener Ancient Sea Town is, for the most part, a field recording. So, essentially, the project produced one new track in seven years and changed its name. Not impressive, really. And what follows when you press play isn’t all that impressive either. Or, maybe it is, but not in a good way.

On track number one, Ancient Sea Town, you can hear waves lapping a shoreline and seagulls screeching. We’re at the seaside. An unexpected opening to an album titled The Man in the Wood. The soundscape moves on, however, and offers another surprise, an owl calling, suggesting night-time, since owls are nocturnal animals. I suppose, this is to indicate that we have moved from the seaside into the woods, the habitat of owls. We hear a few notes of a dreamy melody and then the track abruptly ends. What to make of it? I really don’t know.

The Subterranean Stench is next, offering rock of an old school kind, calling Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath to mind. The music is bass-heavy with a touch of psychedelia and a hint of stoner. Not bad. God of Panic, the album’s pre-released track, follows, starting with a rather challenging piece of music. A melange of story-telling and poetry, accompanied by folky and medieval-sounding guitar tunes, interlaced with chimes and short, but penetrant and childish flute lines, this is for die-hard fans only. The vocals, announced in the press info as having a “breath-taking expressiveness and [a] range [that] even recalls those of Jim “The Doors” Morrison and the legendary Tim Buckley”, resemble a bard-like singsong here and contribute decisively in making this a challenging listening experience. Then, somewhere around the three-minute mark of this 10-minute track, the soundscape changes dramatically. Completely out of nowhere and in no way connected to what came before, a doomy kind of rock, energy-laden and purposeful, fills your eardrums. This middle part of God of Panic is the best piece of music on the album, and I would have happily listened to more of this. But it was not to be.

They Seek Baryba continues with a combination of minimalistic, floral soundscapes, and dramatic proto-doom, the recording quality of which could use an upgrade. There are also field recordings to be heard here, birds twittering, people walking, laughing. The final track Cassap, clocking in at an impressive thirteen and a half minutes, tests the listeners patience once again with Yaaroth’s now established variant of folky story-telling, the musical equivalent of banter. The track changes tempo and direction frequently, with the vocals reaching surprising hights.

Well… What else to say, except that this didn’t work for me? Man in the Wood, telling a story from the fantasy genre, accompanied alternately by bard-style/folky sounds and doomy rock, has got some interesting and appealing parts, but there are also very challenging bits which do not make me want to go back to this. Also, the self-praise in the press info was really off-putting.

(5/10 Slavica)

https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-man-in-the-wood